September 2014

President Obama, addressing the ebola outbreak September 16, 2014 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with frequent contributor Thomas Joscelyn discussing his recent piece on "Misunderstanding al Qaeda" and how its growth is becoming a threatening success.

Republican Elbert Guillory, a state senator in Louisiana, has released a new web video through his Free At Last PAC that criticizes Democratic senator Mary Landrieu's record.

Mario Trujillo of The Hill reports that:

The editors at the San Francisco Chronicle have endorsed Republican Pete Peterson for secretary of state in California. Here's an excerpt from the endorsement:

Few people are happy with the limbo in which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac currently dwell. The Treasury placed the two government-sponsored entities that buy and guarantee the bulk of all mortgages issued in the United States into a conservatorship in 2008 after the collapse of the housing market,…

President Obama will be taking the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the White House announced.

The Factual Feminist warns that a “little army of junior assistant deans and harassment apparatchiks are quietly repealing the free speech protections of the First Amendment.”

Politico recently hired Timothy Noah to be the publication's Labor & Employment editor. Now Noah is a former Slate and New Republic columnist who's known for being stridently liberal, so if you are an employer or someone who generally just likes reading coverage of labor issues that isn't slanted…

This is the conclusion, as Pedro Nicolaci Da Costa of the Wall Street Journal  reports, reached by:

Even before the Healthcare.gov website disaster unfolded in October 2013, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had been looking to the future. HHS announced in June of that year that Hewlett-Packard would be replacing Terremark, a Verizon subsidiary, as the main contractor hosting the…

In recent days, Republicans appear to have opened up leads in several key Senate battles, including Alaska,Colorado, and Iowa. Add those to their already established edges in Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia -- and the GOP right now has the lead in about eight…

President Obama was counting strokes on the golf course at Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia last Saturday, but the day before a $91,318.76 contract was awarded to count something quite different at Fort Belvoir: bats. The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation will conduct the "Bat…

Rick Perry met with Henry Kissinger to talk foreign policy, the Texas governor announced on Twitter. 

Arizona Republicans are in a tough fight to keep the governor's mansion. Their candidate, state treasurer Doug Ducey, is effectively tied with Democrat Fred DuVal. Since voters in the state generally lean toward the GOP, DuVal has cast himself as a moderate outsider, a businessman who seeks…

In this week's newsletter, the boss looks at the 2014 midterm election:

The Chamber of Commerce is releasing a new ad Tuesday featuring NASCAR racing legend and North Carolina native Richard Petty endorsing Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis. "In racing and in life, there's always a leader, someone who  knows how to get to the finish line, who makes the tough…

The Washington Nationals ended their regular season in spectacular fashion when 28-year-old ace Jordan Zimmerman pitched a no-hitter Sunday night. Even the final out wasn't without drama. Left fielder Stephen Souza made a miraculous diving catch on a pop fly to the outfield that secured Zimmerman's…

There is likely much gnashing of teeth in the intelligence community today in the wake of Obama’s interview with 60 Minutes last night. He laid the blame for the rise of the Islamic State at the feet of the intelligence community. “Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has…

The latest episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol, featuring Gen. Jack Keane:

The Wall Street Journal editorializes: 

Problems at the VA were largely – but not entirely – in the realm of scheduling.  No one argued in favor the current system, which had veterans waiting in line for medical attention for months and even years. Even if the supervisors who cooked the books and paid themselves bonuses were all shown…

Democrat Bruce Braley says those who want to know his commitment to our nation's veterans need only look at the website of his Senate campaign.

"Ruth Bader Ginsburg Is an American Hero," reads the headline in the New Republic. But despite talking to an "American Hero," Jeffrey Rosen, the magazine's legal affairs editor, still wants to know whether the Supreme Court justice will hang up her robe.

From Reuters:

Senator Ted Cruz’s vigorous defense of Israel at a recent conference for persecuted Middle Eastern Christians in Washington, D.C., provoked jeers from a loud minority in the audience, made up largely of Catholics and Orthodox, many of them from the region or of Middle Eastern background. In June,…

Under the peak of Mount Taygetus, the wooded Vyros Gorge tumbles into the Gulf of Messinia at the small port of Kardamyli. Around the headland is a blue cove and the hamlet of Kalamitsi. A flock of low, white houses, their pantiled roofs the color of burnt orange, huddle under stripes of gray-green…

Republican voters are down on the sluggish GOP officials they elected, and the officeholders whine about the unreasonable people who voted for them. Republican backbenchers complain about their lame leaders, and GOP leaders grumble about their unruly followers. Right-wing pundits despair of…

New Haven, Conn.

On a cold February night in 2009, a turboprop commuter plane out of Newark was only a few miles from Buffalo when the “stick shaker” suddenly triggered. The plane had slowed to 135 knots after the crew had lowered the landing gear and extended the flaps, and the plane threatened to enter an…

There’s nothing quite so pointless as a movie about gloomy and depressed criminals. Why watch two hours about life on the other side of the law if there’s no kick to it? Crime movies are fun because they acknowledge the pleasures of transgression even as they show the wages of sin. So crooks on…

I met Chris in first grade. Both new to the school, we were wary of each other that year, but by the following September we had become best friends.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson seems like an unlikely candidate for celebrity, but he’s hawking something liberal America desperately wants: the sense of satisfaction that comes from pretending you’re smarter than others, without actually thinking too hard. Tyson, the driving force behind the…

The war on terror is over, the president assured us a year ago. Now, we are told, that war is very much with us and will be pursued with all due diligence. The president was obviously responding to the polls reflecting the disapproval of the public, but also to critics in his own party. Dianne…

Big ideas sometimes play a role in political campaigns, but not in this year’s midterm elections. Republican candidates concentrate on linking their opponents to President Obama and his policies. That’s it. Democrats are understandably wary of defending Obama. They go after Republicans on minor or…

For digital natives, studying classic English and American literature in college is about as attractive as mowing the lawn. When authorities require it, digital natives will do it as a chore: They find a command of humanistic knowledge irrelevant to their sense of self. They see no compelling…

In this foray into what Hamlet famously styled the “undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns,” Judy Bachrach looks at recent accounts of those claiming to have returned from the undiscovered country in order to suggest what her readers’—and, indeed, her own—“impending itineraries”…

As far as newspaper corrections go, it was a whopper. On August 24, the editors of the New York Times sucked the air out of a windy essay that had blown through its pages a few days before. The original article bore the headline “Generation Nice.” It was adorned with color photos of fresh-faced…

Our friends at the Foundation for Constitutional Government have just released the latest in their “Conversations with Bill Kristol” series of videos. The Scrapbook’s boss had a fascinating sit-down with PayPal founder and storied tech investor Peter Thiel, whose new book, Zero to One: Notes on…

The conflict in Ukraine took some dramatic turns this month that led many observers to conclude that the Kremlin was succeeding in its effort to keep Ukraine under Russia’s thumb, with the collusion of a spineless West. Actually, while Russia has wrested some concessions, the handwringing is…

Manchester, N.H.

Pundits throw out all sorts of numbers to explain the Republican defeat in the 2012 presidential election. So here’s our number: $65,000. That is a rough estimate of the household income of the average 2012 voter. Republicans lost because Mitt Romney did not do well enough with this voter or those…

Providence

With little fanfare, President Obama has enjoyed remarkable success in his project to remake the federal courts in his own ideological image. How much more he achieves during his final two years in office depends in large part on whether Republicans win control of the Senate this November.

This week’s Fashion Don’t is awarded to our edgy friends at Urban Outfitters, who offered on their web catalogue a grungy pullover (“Get it or regret it!”) for the uber-grungy price of $129. This was no ordinary sweatshirt, however: On the front was imprinted the name and seal of Ohio’s Kent State…

Undoubtedly much to the chagrin of the former mayor, more New Yorkers are smoking these days. According to the latest data from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, adult smoking rates in New York City have risen to 16 percent, from an all-time low of 14 percent in 2010.

America’s “pivot” to Asia is rapidly going nowhere, but diplomatic challenges in the most economically vibrant region of the world still cry out for attention. These include the brash assertiveness of a rising China, the emergence of an erratic, nuclear-armed young North Korean leader, and the…

Top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett was given a cameo role in the latest episode of CBS's The Good Wife. The airing of the episode comes after a busy week for President Obama -- which included bombing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a series of meetings at the United Nations, and various…

President Obama said that American troops in are "in a war environment" fighting the Islamic State and that the men and women in the military are in "harm's way." He made the comments this evening on 60 Minutes:

Democrats continue to sound the alarm. The latest fundraising email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has this subject line: "kiss any hope goodbye."

On Friday Colin Kahl was named Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser and deputy assistant to the president. Kahl previously served in the Obama administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East between 2009-2011, but is probably best known for his work…

Last week was good for environmentalists, and perhaps even for the environment. President Obama doubled down on his effort to increase the likelihood of the success of the 2015 UN climate change conference in Paris, claiming the U.S. has “a special responsibility to lead. That’s what great nations…

If I sported a hairpiece, I’d be wearing it at half-mast right about now, upon hearing that the world just grew a little less interesting.  For the most colorful man who ever inhabited Congress, former Ohio Democratic Rep. James A . Traficant Jr., expired today at the age of 73.  Traficant—he of…

For many, the Adrian Peterson child abuse case spanning Texas to Minnesota has been tough to grasp as, up until several weeks ago, he was viewed by most people who knew anything about him as a good man, not just a great football player for the Minnesota Vikings. Compounding matters is that the…

Secretary of State John Kerry writes in his hometown paper, the Boston Globe, about how with U.S. leadership, "the world" will defeat the Islamic terrorist group ISIS. Kerry, who voted for the Iraq War in 2003 and later withdrew his support,tries to draw a distinction between the military actions…

Colin Kahl has just been named Vice President Joseph Biden's national security adviser. Kahl previously served in the Obama administration at the Department of Defense, and left in December 2011 when he moved to the Center for New American Security.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the September 29th Issue's Books and Arts section.

When the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, was signed into law in March 2010, one of the Act's stipulations was that CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) educate consumers about how the law would work. In September 2011, CMS awarded a three year contract to the popular medical…

Jahili [non-sharia] society because of its Jahili characteristics is not a worthy partner for compromise.

Eric Katz of Government Executive writes that Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., has:

A new chart from the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee shows a startling fact: Almost 1 in 4 Americans between the ages of 25-54 (or prime working years) are not working. 

Mary Burke, Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial candidate, tells a local news station that she put "hundreds of hours" into a jobs plan that was partly plagiarized from other Democratic candidates:

Attorney General Eric Holder appeared to choke up as he announced he'd be stepping down from his Cabinet position as soon as a replacement is confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Here's video:

When Wisconsin governor Scott Walker signed a law curbing the power of public sector unions in his state in 2011, Democrats warned that public schools would suffer terribly. But one year after the law had taken effect--and in the midst of a recall campaign that was driven entirely by the backlash…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on his recent story "Speak for Middle America."

A friend of TWS shares some ideas: 

At Real Clear Politics, Sean Trende offers a theory about why so many Senate races are close and yet Republicans seem poised to do well anyway. Looking at polling trends from past election cycles, Trende sees a situation where Democratic candidates are unlikely to improve much on their current…

In the wake of President Obama’s speech yesterday at the U.N. General Assembly, there were reports of another chemical weapons attack near Damascus launched by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. If true, Assad is just drawing the logical conclusion from the president’s speech and the administration’s…

Rep. Tom Cotton, the Republican nominee in the Arkansas Senate race, is running an ad highlighting his leadership in trying to fix Washington's broken farm bill legislation. The ad isn't particularly controversial ormaking false claims, in any discernible way and yet "fact checkers" at…

Rob Davis of the Oregonian reports that:

Eric Holder, the attorney general and one of President Obama's longest serving cabinet members, will resign. NPR reports:

First time claims are looking good.  As Jeffry Bartash at Maket Watch reports:

The Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) is looking to buy 40,000 emergency Mylar blankets. The silvery, polyester blankets are often used in detention facilities where those caught illegally crossing the border into the United States are held. A number of photos of children in…

America is “at a dangerous moment for our country and our friends,” said Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for Senate in New Hampshire, on Wednesday afternoon. In a speech at St. Anselm College near Manchester, Brown described the chaos that’s broken out across the world over the last year or…

These days, mentioning birth control and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the same sentence will likely draw some strong reactions. But a recent contractor inquiry by HHS for its National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland adds a new wrinkle. This time, the…

Vice President Joe Biden is headed next week to Boston for an "event." The White House did not say what kind of event the vice president plans to attend. 

President Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly touched very lightly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That alone is a step forward: in previous years, he has made it a central part of his speech and left the impression that it is the main issue in world affairs.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with frequent contributor Steven F. Hayes on how he learned he was on the government's terror watch list.

Time for the big smack down.  The USA vs. the whole of Europe in a take no prisoners golf match.  The Brits are already upset and accusing Team America of unsportsmanlike conduct.  What they object to is … Ricky Fowler’s haircut, which Oliver Brown describes in the Telegraph as:

America has a long history of superstar entrepreneurs becoming gurus, motivational speakers, or even politicians. Very few of them become public intellectuals. But that's more or less what Peter Thiel is. Though perhaps that's not quite fair to him. You might just as well say that he was an…

In his United Nations speech, President Obama will bring up the summer shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.

Here's the text, as prepared for delivery, of President Obama's address to the United Nations General Assembly:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsuburg is defiant: She is not stepping down. Ginsburg made the comments in a recent interview with Elle magazine.

There's now a smaller percentage of American who believe pot should be legalized than there were a year ago.

Bill Clinton was asked about Barack Obama's political situation by former aide George Stephanopoulos on ABC Clinton of course has some words for Republicans and "how totally political Washington is today" (as opposed to when Clinton was in the White House?). But surprisingly Clinton also claims a…

“Last night’s strikes were only the beginning,” Defense Department spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby told the Pentagon press corps.  More strikes can be “expected.”

The attacks on ISIS targets in Syria will do damage.  And the enemy may look for ways to retaliate.  Troubling news, in that regard comes from Justin Sink who writes in The Hill:

A TV ad from a new super PAC targets Democratic congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Gary Peters of Michigan. The 30-second ad's voiceover says that "for the last six years, we've had a president and a Senate who's divided us and fumbled foreign policy, leading from behind." The ad shows images of…

Christina Hoff Sommers, of Factual Feminist fame, continues to expose the feminist establishment’s war on truth. This jaunty five-minute video takes on the endlessly recycled pseudo-fact of the 23-cent wage gap between men and women. Watch it below:

The U.S. launched airstrikes in Syria for the first time overnight. Much of the public discourse in the weeks leading up to the bombings focused on the Islamic State, a former branch of al Qaeda that has captured a significant amount territory across both Iraq and Syria. But the bombings are not…

A new ad from New Hampshire Senate candidate Scott Brown highlights the Republican's message of "restoring America's leadership in the world." The ad criticizes Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen and President Barack Obama for being "confused about the nature of the threat" from radical Islamist…

"Mother Nature ... is screaming at us about" climate change, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told the crowd at the opening event of Climate Week NYC 2014. While Kerry used a more measured tone than that which he attributed to Mother Nature, the apocalyptic nature of his warnings were in keeping…

Speaker of the House John Boehner supports President Obama's actions against ISIS. 

This is a real New York Times correction:

A.J. Lagoe and Steve Eckert of Military Times report that:

The U.S. Navy released this video of airstrikes being launched against ISIS in Syria:

EMILY's List, an organization dedicated to electing women who oppose legal restrictions on abortion and support taxpayer-funding of abortion, held a fundraiser in New York City today, but one notable name was dropped from the list of speakers: Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky's Democratic…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with frequent contributor Steven F. Hayward on the protests by climate change activists in New York and in a few other locations, who they are, and why their protests don't matter.

Democratic congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia may be vulnerable for reelection, according to details from an internal poll conducted on behalf of his Republican challenger. Connolly, the three-term Democrat who respresents a chunk of Washington's Northern Virginia suburbs, is reportedly below…

Democratic senator Mark Pryor did not own a home in Arkansas, the state he represents in Washington, during his first four years in the U.S. Senate. And now it appears he lives part-time at the Washington, D.C. home of his brother, a top lobbyist for Microsoft.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan officiated a same-sex marriage over the weekend, the Associated Press reports. It was her first.

Radio host Hugh Hewitt writes:

Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon reports:

With the announcement in Kabul of a power-sharing government between the two presidential candidates, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan election comes closer to a resolution. What is missing, however, is an actual result. The “national unity government” was one part of a deal brokered…

Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand reportedly reveals in her memoir that one U.S. senator told her, "Don’t lose too much weight now. I like my girls chubby!"

Thirty-one U.S. senators have sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry to express concern that the U.S. might sign a bad nuclear deal with Iran.

On September 10, President Barack Obama announced in a prime-time television address that the United States would be going to war—sort of. He explained that terrorists in Iraq and Syria threatened the United States—sort of. He proclaimed that the United States would do everything in its power to…

In his September 10 speech to the nation, President Obama said, “This is American leadership at its best: We stand with people who fight for their own freedom; and we rally other nations on behalf of our common security and common humanity.”

Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan

The 50th anniversary of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement is upon us, and we’re willing to concede that the founders of the movement had a good slogan—even if it pains The Scrapbook to contemplate the damage done by “campus activists” since then. Whether the social and political change it foments…

Well, this was predictable. House Republicans last week acceded to an extension of the Export-Import Bank for at least the next nine months. The Export-Import Bank is far from the worst example of government-business cronyism. I just completed a history of American political corruption and actually…

In theory, this Jeff Koons retrospective is a big deal. It has taken over the entire Marcel Breuer fortress at 945 Madison Avenue—an honor that, if memory serves, has been accorded to no previous artist. Perhaps more important, it is the last exhibition that the Whitney will ever mount in the…

Back in the Edenic days when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal and the people of this great nation were as one—way back in January 2011, that is—President Obama called on Americans to put one million electric cars on the road by 2015. It was a typically Obamian…

Little Rock

Obamacare—or at least the version of it that the president and his advisers currently think they can get away with putting into place—has been upending arrangements and reshuffling the deck in the health system since the beginning of the year. That’s when the new insurance rules, subsidies, and…

The Obama administration very much wants a diplomatic success somewhere in the world. So when the president orders the head of the U.S. Navy to meet with his Chinese counterpart and find areas of cooperation, it is neither surprising nor inappropriate. But the possibility that the Chinese Navy will…

When I was 16 years old and obsessed with the Glass family stories of J. D. Salinger, I convinced three of my friends to set out for Cornish, New Hampshire, in hopes of meeting the reclusive author. I’d recently read an unauthorized biography of Salinger that had provided some clues concerning how…

Lexington, Neb.

The surest way to know who you are is to understand who you are not. For as long as I can remember, I’ve thought myself a simple man. I prefer hamburgers to fancy cheeseburgers, with all their dolled-up, dairy-fied excess. I have a “Simplicity” calendar with lots of Lao Tzu quotes. I would rather…

Let’s face it. Should Rebecca Mead, a New Yorker staff writer, offer us her mere, unadorned autobiography as something to pack along with our pail and shovel as a good beach read, she might risk the odd sarcastic comment from a friend or accusations of presumption or arrogance from those less…

History is rewritten and rehashed—in the lingo, it is “revised”—for many reasons, some of which have nothing to do with politics, ideology, or current academic trends. Sometimes, the reason is the sudden availability of never-before-seen documents; sometimes it’s a historian’s more thorough…

The summer of 2014 confirms it: Hollywood is dying. By “Hollywood,” I mean the industry that produces mainstream, conventional movies that are made and distributed by big studios. This summer was a great disappointment for the business, with total ticket sales down 15 percent from the year before:…

It has been a constant refrain from the president’s supporters that Barack Obama has been subject to levels of criticism that no other president has had to confront. To that end, we refer you to Daily Beast columnist Michael Tomasky, a usually sensible, middle of the road liberal as it happens, who…

Hyrum Neizer was a successful Salt Lake City truck driver and a happily married man until the headaches began. Then, suddenly, for no apparent reason, he was disabled by pain—pain so punishing that he often ended up in the emergency room. He sought help from physician after physician, but the…

It has become a staple of the political left to brand Republicans the anti-science, anti-reason party. This narrative congealed in a breathless 2005 book by journalist Chris Mooney entitled—does the phrase sound familiar?—The Republican War on Science. Those fueling the narrative today seize on…

“Good old rugby football. All over the British Isles its exponents were in the van of those who went.” —Walter Carey, Bishop of Bloemfontein and former British Lion, 1921 One hundred years ago, the rugby pitches of the British Empire and France emptied out, and a generation of players traded in…

Last week, Senator Ted Cruz helped unmask an organization ostensibly founded to protect a Middle East minority. When the Texas legislator, the keynote speaker, asked the gala dinner audience comprising mostly Middle Eastern Christians at the In Defense of Christians conference in Washington to…

Imagine that a beloved family member has died unexpectedly, leaving a huge void in your life. Logic dictates that you will never hear another word from the deceased again. But then, the departed contacts you in an hours-long séance! The medium in this case is an editor named Levi Stahl; the spirit…

At the United Nations General Assembly, Secretary of State John Kerry will make "climate change ... a foreign policy priority," the State Department announced in press release. "Secretary Kerry Elevates Climate Change at UN General Assembly," the press release is titled.

Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, later this afternoon at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. Matt Lee of Associated Press reports on Twitter:

Vice President Joe Biden spent the weekend in Aspen at a private equity conference. That's a fact the White House tried to downplay. 

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

If you know how many months there are in a “considerable time,” you will know exactly when Janet Yellen and her colleagues on the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy committee plan to begin raising interest rates. If not, you can add your guess to those of professional Fed watchers who are…

A new poll from Public Opinion Strategies, commissioned by Independent Women’s Voice, finds that people who care about the issue of Obamacare really don’t like Obamacare.  On the flip side, people who like Obamacare really don’t care about it very much.  That’s a bad combination for pro-Obamacare…

Although President Obama has been unequivocal that US forces will not return to Iraq for "boots on the ground" combat, some in his administration (Gen. Martin Dempsey, John Kerry, Joe Biden) have dropped hints that future events may change that. Friday, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno joined…

Ben Casselman and Reuben Fischer-Baum of 538 have gone inside the numbers (as they say) of the economic recovery and their findings are not comforting.

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at U.S. Aid's 2014 Frontiers in Development Forum Friday and gave a stark warning about "500-year" drought conditions around the world that he says are a result of climate change. He went so far as to say that "[t]here are people killing each other over water in…

As the military prepares to take on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is ordering a review ... of the military's ties to the National Football League. This comes "in the wake of the scandal over how the league is handling domestic-abuse allegations against players,"…

At a women's conference in Washington, Vice President Joe Biden touted Bob Packwood, a politician brought down by a sexual harassment scandal: 

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on ISIS, the White House's response, and Democrats and the 2014 elections.

President Barack Obama has released a statement praising Scotland's vote to remain with the United Kingdom. 

Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski reports that Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke plagiarized portions of her "Invest for Success" jobs plan: 

A fascinating interview on CNBC with Alibaba chair Jack Ma, whose company will go public today in New York:

For what it is worth (and you’ll have to be the judge of that) most “security insiders” are skeptical when it comes to the president’s strategy for the fight with ISIS.  As Kaveh Waddell of Government Executive reports:

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper peppered his Thursday speech to an intelligence community summit with humor, drawing laughter from his audience nearly a dozen times. Clapper began his talk to the Intelligence National Security Alliance (INSA)/Armed Forces Communications and…

President Obama announced this evening that France will join in bombing ISIS (also known as ISIL) in Iraq. 

A powerful speech on foreign policy by Florida senator Marco Rubio:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Geoffrey Norman on his recent blog item on the NFL controversies, and what the NFL should do fix its image.

President Obama addressed troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida on Wednesday regarding his strategy to "degrade and destroy ISIL," but also reminded the audience about his plans for the U.S. military in Afghanistan [emphasis added]:

The president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, Kenneth Palinkas, says in a press release the immigration system may be exploitable by the terrorist army ISIS.

A new poll finds that 58 percent of likely voters are “more likely” to support members of Congress who vote to stop Obamacare’s taxpayer bailout of insurance companies.  Half of that 58 percent (29 percent) are “much” more likely to do so.  Meanwhile, only 15 percent of likely voters are “less…

A new study from the American Action Forum finds that "1.9 Million Americans [Are] Falling into the ACA Created 'Family Glitch.'"

Here's a petition from facultyforacademicfreedom.org/ going around "to Oppose Boycotts of Israel's Academic Institutions, Scholars, and Students." The text of the petition reads:

First, the good news. Initial unemployment claims, which were expected to come in at 305,000, came in at 280,000 good deal less than that. More people working might mean that, in time, wages will rise and families that have never seen their financial situations improve since the Great Recession,…

In the late 17th century, times were tough in Scotland.  The Stuarts, the Scots’ royal family, had been tossed off the throne of England for a second time, and the country had been excluded from the burgeoning English system of international trade regulated by the Navigation Acts.  Even the climate…

It is a common enough thing in party politics. The candidate with the most money, best organization, most favorable press, etc., is a disappointment to the purists of the party. Winning isn’t enough.  What does it profit a party if it gains the whole world and loses (in the present case) its…

First Lady Michelle Obama visited sick children at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where she complained about living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and being married to the president of the United States. She made the comments in response to being asked about her "favorite…

This week’s referendum on Scottish independence may seem like an obscure, perhaps even Ruritanian quarrel to many Americans, but it has profound implications not just for the U.K. and Europe but also for the United States.

In a debate on CNN this afternoon between Jay Carney and Bill Kristol, the former White House spokesman conceded that in fact there will be "boots on the ground" fighting the Islamic State. 

Though he didn't say it in so many words, President Obama came out today personally opposed to Scottish independence, which is set to go to a vote tomorrow. Wednesday afternoon, the president took to Twitter with this message:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the House Select Committee on Benghazi's hearings, and the status of U.S. policy on combatting ISIS.

At a school on MacDill Air Force Base, President Obama was asked whether he fought in the civil war. "No," Obama reportedly responded. "I was born in 1961."

Speaking in Iowa today, Vice President Joe Biden touted the "wisest man in the Orient." Here's video:

Robert Burns of the AP reports that:

Over at the New Atlantis, Alan Jacobs has a post arguing that Twitter has changed in a fundamental--and fundamentally unpleasant--way. A sample:

A New York man was indicted last night for helping ISIS, the terrorist army President Obama has pledged to "degrade" and "destroy."

Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times reports that ISIS:

Tim Craig of the Washington Post reports that:

Robert Gates, President Obama's first defense secretary, said this morning on CBS that President Obama's strategy for defeating the Islamic State is unrealistic:

In testimony yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted that the most that could be done by way of creating an effective Free Syrian Army – that is, the forces of the moderate…

All things being equal, Republicans should feel reasonably good about winning the Senate in seven weeks. They currently hold a polling lead in six Democratic-held seats. They are within five points in another four seats, and mid-September polling often underestimates the position of the ultimate…

President Obama talked about the spread of Ebola at the CDC in Atlanta today. He said it's "spiraling out of control," according to the pool report. 

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on why President Obama will have to put boots on the ground to defeat ISIS.

Congressman Tom Cotton, the Republican running for Senate in Arkansas, blasts his Democratic opponent, Mark Pryor, for refusing to debate foreign policy issue.

ISIS is a threat to world peace and the U.S. has reason, the president has said, to “degrade" and, then, to “destroy” it. The threat, for some, is much closer.  Right next door, in fact.  As Joel Greenberg of McClatchy reports:

The Islamic Republic of Iran remains the worst global example of capricious interference by Muslim theocrats in the personal and spiritual lives of its citizens. On September 9, as reported by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI), seven young Iranians went on trial. Their…

When the Affordable Care Act was being debated in 2009, President Obama promised that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan." In 2013, millions of Americans learned that wasn't true when their plans were canceled.

James Pethokoukis notes that according to a new study by the Tax Foundation, the United States:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, said that the army of the Islamic State is fighting because of "grievances." He made the comments this morning at a hearing on Capitol Hill:

We're at war. We're putting boots on the ground. We're not waiting around for the host nation's government to get its affairs in order, or for a regional coalition to commit first. The president has apparently overcome his reluctance to use the military, his worries about a commitment to intervene…

Over the weekend in Iowa, President Bill Clinton got caught on a hot mic at the Harkin Steak Fry agreeing that Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu can't bring peace between the Israelis and Palestinians:

The AP reports that

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that to counter the ideology of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its claim of a "religious foundation" for its actions, part of the strategy of the international coalition he is attempting to assemble must be to "begin to put real Islam…

At an event today at Tufts University in Massachusetts, Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren said it was "fair" when an activist compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Holocaust. 

Last night’s contest between the Chicago Bears and the San Francisco 49ers, in that team’s brand new stadium, was hijacked by the zebras. More penalties than plays, it sometimes seemed. And the ratings were off a little but still good enough to beat the Miss America contest. But if a ratings slide…

The Obama administration is behaving like a prisoner under interrogation: eventually, if unintentionally, it ends up talking most about the subjects it least wishes to discuss.

Years after the National Mall was torn up and blocked off to re-grow grass as part of the stimulus package, the bulldozers are back to clear a ten by six acre parcel, located adjacent to the reflection pool, between the Lincoln Memorial and the World War Two Memorial. The parcel of land will be…

The Washington Post editorial board was in favor of decriminalizing pot. But it is not in favor of legalizing it.

We have learned much about ISIS in the last few weeks, virtually all of it troubling. The CIA has upped its estimates of the number of ISIS fighters to something in the neighborhood of 30,000. And from Ken Dilanian of the AP we learn that through various methods, it can raise the money it needs to…

Regarding the economy, we have come to expect the unexpected which is, it sometimes seems, the only thing one can count on.  For instance, Shobhana Chandra of Bloomberg is reporting today that:

Peter Thiel, the author of Zero to One, Notes on StartUps, or How to Build the Future, is on the latest episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol:

The banner, featuring a cartoon condom with a smiling face, reads: "I am Mr. Condom. Use me whenever you want to have sex. I will protect you from STDs, early pergnancy [sic], and unwanted pregnancy." Across the top of the banner are the words "I took the condom pledge," the slogan from which the…

Bret Baier, host of the popular Fox News program Special Report with Bret Baier and an accomplished journalist at a young age, has an interesting professional story to tell. And in Special Heart he tells it, if only in a few chapters. Born in New Jersey and raised in Atlanta, Baier attended DePauw…

The massive sexual abuse case in Rotherham, England, has revealed again how awkward and self-defeating the Western response often is to matters that touch on religious identity. Although the independent inquiry led by Professor Alexis Jay is tersely graphic about the 1,400-plus girls, some as young…

The multiplex in the age of brands—an era of sequels and prequels, of movies derived from comic books and board games, of repackaged and repurposed “intellectual property” that comes with “high pre-awareness” and appeals to “all four quadrants”—isn’t the friendliest place for movie stars. 

Labor Day marks the traditional start of the fall campaign season, and Republicans appear to be in a good position for the upcoming midterm elections. No serious political analyst believes that the House of Representatives is in danger of falling to the Democrats; more likely, Republicans will pick…

In the early morning hours of May 2, 2011, an elite team of 25 American military and intelligence professionals landed inside the walls of a compound just outside the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. CIA analysts had painstakingly tracked a courier to the compound and spent months monitoring the…

Confident about the upcoming election, and afraid they’d fumble a handoff, House Republicans have apparently decided to take a knee until voters cast their ballots. But this timid run-out-the-clock mentality has the potential to hurt the party in both the short term and the long run.

On September 23 in New York, the president will have an opportunity to score a political victory and advance an important part of his agenda. No, not at some Park Avenue fundraiser, although he might squeeze one in, but at Climate Summit 2014, a meeting of heads of state convened by U.N. secretary…

It is always strange to stumble upon seemingly modern turns of phrase in books that are quite old. It proves that catchphrases and colorful expressions believed to have entered the vernacular in recent times have actually been around for decades, even centuries. What’s more, they often originated…

It takes a daring man, or a very erudite professor, to name a book Philology. Hardly anybody seems to know what the word means. And for that very reason, the professional organization of classicists to which I belong—the American Philological Association (APA)—is currently in the process of…

This morning I was reading along in Vladimir Jabotinsky’s remarkable novel The Five, when I came to a chapter titled “Inserted Chapter, Not Intended for the Reader.” The chapter, it turns out, is about nature writing. Jabotinsky’s narrator, a writer, notes that a critic remarked on the absence of…

It's polemical title leaves us in no doubt of what to expect from this book. William Deresiewicz has written a passionate attack on everything that’s wrong with today’s elite universities and colleges and the credentialed students who attend them. He terms it “a letter to my twenty-year-old self,”…

Augusta, Maine

During the siege of Bastogne in December 1944, the German general Heinrich von Lüttwitz sent his American adversaries a note, explaining how “the fortune of war is changing” and that “there is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable…

Beijing has dealt another setback to democracy in Hong Kong. On Sunday, August 31, China’s central government dashed hopes that the chief executive, the top official responsible for the city of 7.2 million people, would be democratically elected in 2017. Rather than open nominations to anyone,…

Vladimir Putin’s efforts to establish hegemony over Ukraine may now have reached a decisive point both for the balance of power in Central and Eastern Europe and for the NATO alliance. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko warned on August 30 that Russia’s invasion of his country and extensive aid…

Two weeks ago, the British press broke the news contained in Professor Alexis Jay’s “Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham.” Between 1997 and 2013, Jay estimated, 1,400 young girls in that Yorkshire town were exploited: gang-raped, trafficked to other cities, threatened,…

"Let’s stipulate that comparisons between our time and the World War II era are inherently vexed. Still, it’s difficult to miss the parallel between the statements of uncertainty from two presidents struggling with a world flying out of control in a domestic political environment .  .  .” (E.J.…

What’s not to admire bout the Danes, a people honored for their rescue of endangered Jews in World War II and an astonishing linguistic facility? When you throw in Hamlet and the great ur-classic of Englit, Beowulf, which both take place on Danish soil, it seems almost incidental that they were…

President Obama’s admission last week that “we don’t have a strategy” to contend with the rise of the Islamic State left just about everyone in Washington disturbed and unsettled. Republicans were disturbed because the administration does, in fact, have a strategy for dealing with Islamist terror,…

Barack Obama’s foreign policy is in shambles. He had a dream, expressed in Cairo, of “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” of “a world where extremists no longer threaten our people.” So he got out of Iraq and failed to follow through in Libya, seeing no need for…

During a press conference on August 28, Barack Obama had a rare moment of candor. “We don’t have a strategy yet,” the president said in response to a question about the prospect of using military force against the Islamic State in Syria. Obama’s declaration drew widespread criticism, as the Islamic…

Back in March, The Scrapbook noted that federal judge Lewis Kaplan had thrown out a $9.2 billion judgment against the oil company Chevron. In his decision, Kaplan documented a staggering amount of corruption by the plaintiff’s attorney, Steven Donziger. (Donziger, by the way, frequently played…

Hillary Clinton was confronted on the rope line after an event today in Iowa by immigration activists. Her response: “You know, I think we have to elect more Democrats.”

John Kerry argued that it doesn't really make a difference if we call U.S. action against ISIS a "war." He criticized the "tortured debate" this morning on CBS:

Tom Harkin, the top Democrat in Iowa, tells ABC News that he has serious questions about where Hillary Clinton stands on the issues:

Hillary Clinton spent the summer in the Hamptons. And, as the New York Times reports, she's been asking friends about income inequality as she gets ready to run president of the United States. 

Manchester, N.H.

Jeffrey H. Anderson, writing for National Review Online:

"A Strategy to Defeat the Islamic State," by Kimberly Kagan, Frederick W. Kagan, & Jessica D. Lewis. A must read for those contemplating how to win in the Middle East.

The White House now definitively says that the "U.S. is at with with ISIL," a position the Obama administration has been hesitant to state in the last couple days:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on President Obama and the upcoming 2014 elections.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the September 8th Issue's Books and Arts section.

Rep. John Fleming critiques President Obama's ISIS strategy:

Hillary Clinton is widely considered, should she enter the 2016 presidential race, the Democratic front runner. But the former secretary of state is shrinking rather than building an already limited website presence. 

Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio, writing about the Yemen and Somalia models for destroying ISIS:

Secretary of State John Kerry insists that we not call the thing by its proper name.  The “thing” being U.S. military actions against ISIS (or ISIL, if you wish) and the name being “war.”

The administration continues to advance its arguments about the economy, with the president even tacking on to the end of his somber speech about new military action in the Middle East, a digression about how well things are going with jobs, manufacturing, and etc.

In New York's 21st congressional district, Republican Elise Stefanik is leading Democrat Aaron Woolf 46 precent to 33 percent, according to a new poll released by Siena College Thursday evening. Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello garners 10 percent of the vote, and 11 percent remain undecided. 

The mother of James Foley, one of the American journalists beheaded by ISIS, talks to CNN's Anderson Cooper about the handling of her son's capture. Here's a clip from CNN (courtesy of Anderson Cooper 360°):

White House spokesman Josh Earnest couldn't define what victory against ISIS will look like. "I didn't bring my Webster's dictionary," he told a reporter.

The Des Moines Register reports:

Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont has been making coy about running for President.  He will be visiting Iowa this weekend and yesterday, as CNN reports, he established some distance between himself and Hillary Clinton, the nominee in waiting.  

Just before 3 a.m., a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the office of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. The office targeted was in his home district in Missouri, and not his Washington, D.C. office.

In deciding how to destroy ISIS, President Obama has rejected the "best military advice." The advice was recently given to the commander in chief from his military leaders.

An NBC affiliate in Virginia reports that nearly 250,000 people in that state will lose their health care plans due to Obamacare:

Jeanna Smialek of Bloomberg reports that:

Michael Morrell, a former acting director of the CIA under Barack Obama, says that the strategy his old boss is using to go after ISIS in Syria does not have a high chance of being successful:

A largely overlooked posting on the White House's Twitter account the very day of the assault on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya in 2012 is a painful symbol of the president's portrayal of the world versus reality. Two hours after word first reached the White House, around the time…

In an address Wednesday night to the nation, President Obama held up America’s strategy in Yemen as a model for the counterterrorism strategy he intends to pursue in Iraq and Syria. By doing so, he committed to a strategy of targeting terrorists from the air and supporting local security forces in…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on President Obama's speech on his administration's strategy to take on ISIS.

President Obama just announced that he is bringing a counter-terrorism strategy to an insurgency fight. He was at pains to repeat the phrase “counter-terror” four times in a short speech. Noting that ISIL is not a state (partly because the international community thankfully does not recognize it),…

President Obama's remarks on destroying ISIS, as prepared for delivery:

In talking about defeating ISIS, President Obama will cite the examples of Yemen and Somalia as models of success.

The White House has released a couple of excerpts of the president's address to the nation. Here's the second:

Secretary of State John Kerry addressed the press in Baghdad, Iraq today before rushing off to a meeting in Amman, Jordan for "bilateral meetings with counterparts to discuss regional issues and the current situation in Iraq." Kerry said that tonight, President Obama "will lay out with great…

President Obama is scheduled to address the nation this evening to discuss destroying the terrorist army of ISIS. But before hitting the airwaves, he's asking Democratic donors to "chip in $10 or more right now to help elect Democrats."

A new poll of the U.S. Senate race in New Jersey reveals an astonishing trend: Cory Booker, the state's Democratic senator running for a full term this fall, frequently polls below 50 percent support against his Republican challenger, Jeff Bell. The latest survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University…

Stories on President Obama’s strategy-for-the-Islamic-State speech this evening have made it plain that the military approach is going to be a combination of U.S. airpower and various Iraqi and Syrian proxies on the ground.  “Obama’s ISIL Strategy to Emphasize Coalition Effort,”…

Gary King, the Democratic candidate for governor in New Mexico, tells the Associated Press he won't apologize or back down from recent remarks he made about his Republican opponent, sitting governor Susana Martinez. King, the current attorney general, told a group of supporters last week that…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on the President's ISIS speech, and whether his foreign policy will help Democrats running for re-election in 2014.

The VA’s culture of malfeasance and corruption resulted in a new leader, new legislation, and new money.  Still, as Jordain Carney of National Journal reports:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney blasted President Obama in a speech today at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Cheney blamed Obama for the "arbitrary and hasty withdrawal of residual forces from Iraq," which he said resulted in "the tragic error that gave us a caliphate."

House Speaker John Boehner has invited Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko to address a joint session of Congress. The speech is scheduled for September 18.

President Obama is set to discuss his plan for confronting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in a primetime speech this evening. According to press reports, the president is ready to authorize the use of military strikes against the group in Syria. Thus far, American military action…

In a speech delivered this morning, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell blasts President Obama's foreign policy for making America weaker.

In June, Rand Paul was very skeptical about bombing ISIS. In August, he was ambivalent. In September, he strongly supported airstrikes.

A new report from NBC claims that President Obama couldn't get a tee time during a recent visit to New York. So he packed up and went home (before returning to New York the next night for a private wedding).

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll came out yesterday and it offers brutal news for President Obama and Democrats. It is worth looking at it in some depth.

Inside the numbers of an ABC poll in which the numbers are decidedly not going the president’s way, there is this interesting nugget:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the GOP's chances at a Republican-controlled Senate come 2015.

Public perception and official pronouncements seem, increasingly, to be at odds.  We are told by the administration, for instance, that the economy is improving and in recovery. The public thinks not with almost half believing we are still in a recession.

Analysts (including myself) have often noted that congressional Democrats have higher favorable numbers than Republicans. Frequently, this is taken to suggest an electoral advantage for Democrats.

President Obama will address the nation Wednesday night in primetime. The subject? The plan for dealing with the Islamic State.

Ashe Schow writes at the Washington Examiner: 

Susana Martinez of New Mexico is the first female Hispanic governor in the country. She's also a gun-toting, tough-on-crime conservative Republican, and that's got Democrats in New Mexico itching to defeat her. Martinez's Democratic opponent for reelection this year is attorney general Gary King,…

Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd said last night on the Charlie Rose Show that if Hillary Clinton were running to be the second woman president of the United States -- and not the first -- "she would not even be considered a frontrunner."  

President Obama hosted "a private dinner with a group of foreign policy experts," the White House announced last night. Among them: Sandy Berger, who was caught stealing and destroying classified documents that related to President Clinton's record on terrorism issues.

By all accounts, 2014 looks to be a very good year for the Republican party. The average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics shows the GOP leading in seven Democratic-held Senate seats, while they are behind in none of their own; the party is also within striking distance in another four…

American Crossroads, the pro-Republican super PAC, has a new ad Tuesday running in Iowa that targets Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Braley. The ad focuses on Braley's absence from 75 percent of the House of Representatives' veterans' affairs committee hearings. On the day of one 2012 hearing…

Obamacare’s defenders are busy declaring victory again.  Ezra Klein is touting a new survey of Obamacare benchmark premiums in some regions of the country as evidence that the law is defying the predictions of critics and working to cut costs rather than increase them.

On Wednesday, the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, President Obama will speak to the American people about his strategy for dealing with the rise of the Islamic State, the would-be caliphate bestriding Iraq and Syria, the most palpable and present threat to the region…

Harvard's Harvey Mansfield wrote on feminism and the universities for THE WEEKLY STANDARD a few months ago ("Feminism and Its Discontents: ‘Rape culture’ at Harvard"). If you'd like to hear more deep and provocative analysis from Mansfield of some of the consequences of feminism, here's your…

Democratic senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana lists her parents' New Orleans address as her primary residence for voting purposes. But it's clear she and her husband consider their primary residence to be their multimillion-dollar home on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. These revelations have…

The Department of Health and Human Services announces another $60 million for Obamacare navigators, a press release from that federal bureaucracy states.

2017 Project executive director Jeffrey Anderson issued a memorandum this morning reporting that the nonpartisan Center for Health & Economy has "scored" the group’s alternative to Obamacare. THE WEEKLY STANDARD readers are familiar with the broad case for the alternative (see here and here), which…

Bruce Braley, the Democratic congressman from Iowa running for the U.S. Senate, was not listed as present at a February 2012 House hearing with then-Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki. On February 15, 2012, Shinseki appeared on a panel before the House Veterans' Affairs committee, which began…

Albert Hunt Jr., ponders in Bloomberg  the possibility that James Webb might challenge Hillary Clinton in the coming campaign for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination.  The column covers the expected bases (Hunt is a pro and has done thousands of thumb suckers in his career) but one…

The "busiest land port of entry in the Western Hemisphere" is getting an upgrade, and according to the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), about a half a million dollars worth of new artwork will be part of the package. The San Ysidro Land Port of Entry, the border crossing facility for the…

Eric Schmitt, Michael R. Gordon, and Helene Cooper of the New York Times report that:

In my quest to write an article about my family vacation to Turkey and thereby write off part of the cost, I came up with an observation I deemed worthy of David Brooks or Malcolm Gladwell. It turned out to be dead wrong.

President Obama, at roughly 4:30 p.m. on August 28, referring to the terrorists of the Islamic State: “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet.” Obama press secretary Josh Earnest, less than an hour later: “In his remarks today, POTUS was explicit—as he has been…

In case you’ve not been paying attention, an issue for House Republicans as the midterm elections draw near is what to do about a president they believe has offended the Constitution by usurping legislative power and failing to carry out his duty to faithfully execute the law.

The Parthenon represents, for many, a golden age in human achievement: the 5th-century b.c. Greek flowering of democracy, sciences, and the arts. But what if its chief ornament, the Parthenon frieze, turned out to be not an embodiment of reason and proportion—of stillness at the heart of motion,…

Conway, Ark.

"Maybe it’s all a matrix and we’re all like programs written by somebody else. .  .  . And none of us really exists, just the matrix. The program works, you live your life and think everything’s fine. Here you are drinking coffee right now. But there is no coffee—it doesn’t exist.” So mused Fyodor…

Twice now, as I enter my forties, I have picked up a new sport. First I took up tennis, which I have always enjoyed watching and is known to be a game one can play well into the gray-haired years. And a couple months ago I started playing Gaelic football, a bruising, I hope not bone-crushing, but…

I live in Connecticut, and I don’t travel much outside of the Northeast corridor. But through a few strokes of luck, and some happy happenstance, I’ve been in Florence five times in the last seven years.

“If we had a keen vision of all ordinary human life,” George Eliot wrote in Middlemarch, “it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence.” To read Philip Roth has been to hear your own heart beat; for over…

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, / And live alone in the bee-loud glade, wrote W. B. Yeats while living in London. Nearly a century later, Sylvia Plath, who kept hives with her husband, composed five poems about bees in the very same house. To these Londoners, bees…

"Imperialist” is a dirty word, one of many clubs with which to beat one’s opponents beyond the margins of society. And it is too easy to forget, in our solipsistic age, that the language of empire once aroused pride and dignity rather than guilt and shame. Lawrence James, a historian of unusual…

In the event of nuclear war, only three things are expected to survive—cockroaches, Twinkies, and the political ambitions of the Kennedy family. 

The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker reported last week that Senator Mary Landrieu, currently fighting for her seat in a tough reelection bid, may not actually reside in Louisiana. In January, she told the Federal Election Commission she lives in Washington, D.C. But she claimed her parents’ address…

One of the stranger episodes of recent weeks is the reported death of an American who died fighting in Syria with the Islamic State. Stranger still is the Washington Post profile of this homegrown jihadist, Douglas McAuthur McCain, whose unlikely name was probably the most interesting thing about…

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the terrorist army many thousand strong now rampaging through the Levant, embraces such an extreme, violent ideology that it makes even al Qaeda squeamish, argue many Western experts. On this reading, al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri was forced to distance…

The Great War did not begin in the trenches, in rain, mud, and dark futility. At first, the fighting was out in the open under blue skies and late summer sunshine. There were bugles and drums, and sometimes the troops even sang when they charged. French officers leading these attacks wore white…

West Allis, Wis.

For the moment, the Gaza war of 2014 is over. Anyone trying now to figure out who won and who lost should recall the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Then, Israelis had a great sense of letdown because they had not “won.” They had not destroyed Hezbollah, and the organization loudly claimed a…

When Joshua Muravchik wrote this book, he could not have known how timely it would turn out to be. He would not have been surprised, however, by the worldwide condemnation of Israel for its “disproportionality” and “lack of restraint” in response to recent Hamas rocket attacks. He writes that…

"Rooting out a cancer like ISIL won’t be easy and it won’t be quick,” President Obama told the American Legion’s annual convention in Charlotte on Tuesday, August 26. He repeated the thought in his pre-Labor Day weekend press conference on August 28. A week before, the day after the murder of James…

Toward the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term, a friend of Vice President Bush encouraged him to think carefully about what a Bush presidency should look like. According to Time, Bush responded, “Oh, the vision thing.” Fairly or unfairly, this phrase came to characterize the Bush 41 tenure. Despite…

Despite the attention paid to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s criticism of President Obama’s foreign policy as lacking an “organizing principle,” there wasn’t much new in her interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. Mostly the exchange covered issues on which her differences with the president are…

If ever a topic was born familiar, this book would qualify. The paradox is easily explained. The title of this collection of essays embodies a truth that would have been undeniable before the age of technology swept over us. At the obvious level, there is the eternal human need for familiar…

This morning in an interview with NBC's Meet the Press, President Obama defended his decision to golf immediately after making a statement on the beheading of American journalist James Foley. "[T]here's always going to be some tough news somewhere," he said. 

President Obama spoke about ISIS at length in his Meet the Press interview this morning, but he didn't offer much clarity as to what he's going to do about ISIS. One might say he's learned from bitter experience not to lay down red lines, and that he 's being purposefully vague. But I'm afraid the…

This morning on Fox News Sunday, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said there's "no question" that he'd be a better president than Hillary Clinton.

Senator Jeff Sessions issues this statement in response to President Obama's decision to wait until after the mid-term election to take action on immigration by executive order.

Analysts hoping to rebut the purveyors of gloom who are arguing that America is in long-term decline were looking to Friday’s job report for comfort. They got none. Instead of continuing to create about 200,000 each month, the economy produced a mere 142,000 new payroll jobs, and only 134,000 in…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with David Skinner reading his casual essay "Fighting Irish."

One of the last competitive GOP primaries of the 2014 election cycle will be decided on Tuesday when Marilinda Garcia and Gary Lambert face off in New Hampshire's second congressional district.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on why you shouldn't bet on President Obama using any muscle on his foreign policy.

“They should know we will follow them to the gates of hell.”

The mood before this morning’s jobs report landed with a thud was one of high, almost touching optimism.  For example, there was this from Matt Phillips at Quartz:

President Obama was asked whether he'll be delaying executive action on immigration until after the mid-term election. He told reporters he was still reviewing options but that he's going to act "within the legal constraints of my office."

For months, Senate candidate Cory Gardner has been attacked as an extremist on the issues of abortion and Obamacare's contraception mandate. His response has been to disavow his support for a 2010 personhood amendment in Colorado and to support over-the-counter access to birth control. But a few…

Senate majority leader Harry Reid believes President Obama is going to take some executive action on immigration.

The eagerly anticipated jobs report comes in at less than 3/4s of the anticipated 200,000-plus.  As Victoria Stilwell of Bloomberg reports:

Republican congressman Tom Cotton holds a small, two-point lead in a new CNN poll of his race against sitting Democratic senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas. The poll of likely voters found 49 percent support Cotton and 47 percent support Pryor. Here's more from CNN:

In July, a hacker gained access to a computer server used to test code for the federal government's Obamacare website HealthCare.gov, according to a Thursday report by the Wall Street Journal's Danny Yadron. Although the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stressed no data was taken and…

Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic senator from New Hampshire, leads her likely Republican challenger Scott Brown by just three points in a new poll commissioned by American Crossroads. The conservative super PAC's poll of likely New Hampshire voters was conducted at the end of August. John DiStaso has…

The Washington Post reports:

The Washington Post reports:

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the war goes on and does not necessarily go well.  As the AP reports:

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Arkansas's largest newspaper, has an editorial criticizing Democratic senator Mark Pryor and praising his Republican challenger, congressman Tom Cotton. Here's an excerpt:

When a class action lawsuit gets settled, the deal has to prescribe how the defendant will pay the members of the injured class and who can be part of that class.

Democratic senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana is already in the electoral battle of her life this November. Her national party is far out of step with Louisiana voters on health care, abortion, and energy issues, and the national mood is continuing to shift against the Democrats. And the leader of…

NBC news reports that:

Recent talk about the economy (especially from within the administration) has been upbeat. So the employment (jobs) number for August, which will be released tomorrow, will be looked at closely since that is the measure of economic health and progress that most people – and, hence, all politicians…

Secretary of State John Kerry's speech at the groundbreaking ceremony for the U.S. Diplomacy Center in Washington, D.C. Wednesday included an intriguing aside that appeared to reference the upcoming 2016 presidential election. Kerry spoke after remarks by each of the five former secretaries of…

Given that I’ve probably published more articles critical of Obamacare than anyone alive, I’m often asked to speak to conservative audiences about our new health law. Last month, I was at the big grassroots confab of Americans for Prosperity, the Defending the American Dream Summit. I asked the…

Democrat Chad Taylor of Kansas is dropping out of his bid for the U.S. Senate, according to the Kansas City Star. Taylor, the district attorney in Shawnee County, thanked his supporters on Twitter:

National Review editors: What's the GOP's case for 2014?

“There is little debate that all patrol officers should be issued BWCs,” wrote attorney Eugene Ramirez in a white paper his law firm issued on so-called body worn cameras (BWCs). Ramirez is correct that there is little debate. In the wake of the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the…

Elliott Abrams, writing for Mosaic:

Scott Clement of the Washington Post reports that, on the question of what to call the NFL team identified with the city of Washington, D.C., a large majority is content to stick with the name “Redskins.”

Fox News 9 of Minneapolis, St. Paul reports that:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on President Obama's recent remarks about making the terrorist group ISIS a "manageable problem."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is joining five of his predecessors on Wednesday at a groundbreaking ceremony for the United States Diplomacy Center, a new 40,000 square foot facility dedicated to "bringing the story of American diplomacy to life." The "state-of-the-art museum and education…

State Department spokewoman Jen Psaki reiterated her boss's claim that ISIS must be "destroyed." But she wouldn't say when.

Speaking earlier this morning in Estonia, President Obama addressed dealing with ISIS. He talked of making ISIS a "manageable problem" if the "international community" comes together:

Steven Sotloff, an American journalist who was savagely beheaded by ISIS, was also an Israeli citizen. Paul Hirschson, an Israeli diplomat, says on Twitter: "Cleared for publication: Steven S[o]tloff was #Israel citizen RIP."

In a statement to the press, White House press secretary Josh Earnest announces 350 more troops to Iraq "to protect our diplomatic facilities and personnel in Baghdad, Iraq."

House Homeland Security Committee chair Michael McCaul said this afternoon on CNN that 100-200 Americans are currently fighting for ISIS in Iraq and Syria:

Say what you will about Barack Obama, but his approach to the Middle East has been ruthlessly consistent.  He was elected on the promise to end America’s involvement in the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He didn’t fulfill those promises as rapidly as his supporters wished – he preferred…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the execution of another American by ISIS, and the GOP's prospects for retaking the Senate in 2014.

Kentucky senator Rand Paul tells the AP that he would seek to "destroy ISIS militarily" if he were president: 

With the president attending this week's NATO summit in Wales, and the heightened concerns among the organization’s members – especially the newer ones with experience of hand’s-on Russian domination and rule – it might be profitable for our “allies” to consider some facts reported by Gideon…

The former constituents who returned Eric Cantor to the private sector have reason to think, He is who we thought he was. As Mario Trujillo of The Hill reports:

Amnesty International has found:

Just before the start of the Labor Day holiday weekend, the reelection campaign for Mitch McConnell of Kentucky announced its campaign manager, Jesse Benton, was resigning. Benton was leaving the campaign, Politico reports, "citing potential distractions over renewed attention to a scandal from the…

Writing in the New York Times over the weekend, Secretary of State Kerry argues forcefully for the creation of a strong and committed coalition of nations to resist and defeat ISIS. 

President Obama addresses the "people of West Africa" in a video posted Tuesday by the U.S. State Department regarding the growing threat of the Ebola virus, which Centers for Disease Control director Tom Friedman just declared on CNN "completely out of control" in Africa (via HotAir). The…

Slowly but surely, the anti-repeal wing of the Republican party is starting to reassert itself.  The latest effort comes from Lanhee Chen, who was the top policy advisor on the Mitt Romney campaign.  As readers will likely recall, that campaign refused to advance an alternative to Obamacare, failed…

Robert Gibbs, the first White House press secretary in the Obama administration, calls President Obama's "we don't have a strategy yet" comment about dealing with ISIS a "wince-able moment."

CNN host Brian Stelter told terror-supporting cleric Anjem Choudary that he "respect[s] that you try to get your message out however you can." He made the comments after Choudary said sharia was coming to America:

In 2014, President Obama has made much of his pen-and-a-phone strategy to accomplish his goals in the face of what he calls an "unprecedented pattern of obstruction" from Republicans in Congress. Apparently the president's supporters are on board with the idea of unilateral executive action. At…

Here's video reportedly of Libyan rebels swimming (and doing a belly-flop) in the U.S. embassy pool in Tripoli:

Sometimes it’s the little things that draw your attention. The other morning (August 20), for example, The Scrapbook noticed a subordinate headline for the main story on the front page of the Washington Post, about the racial confrontations in Ferguson, Missouri: “County prosecutor’s past raises…

On August 15, a grand jury in Travis County, Texas, shocked the Lone Star State when it handed up an indictment of Governor Rick Perry, a likely candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. According to the grand jury, Perry abused his power in 2013 when he attempted to get the county’s…

After nearly four years of procedural delay, the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling is set to open shortly. Sterling was indicted at the end of 2010 for leaking information about a top-secret CIA operation to James Risen of the New York Times in violation of the espionage statutes. It is…

On a recent trip to Washington I had the rare experience of some free time between meetings. Best used to get a much-needed haircut, I thought. A few blocks from my hotel I found myself in a barber shop of the sort that caters to people more modern than I, a gray-haired economist, and generally…

President Obama insists Republican opposition to his policies has forced him to boycott Congress and resort to governing by executive order. This is only partially true. Yes, Republicans strongly oppose his initiatives. But refusing to deal with Congress was Obama’s decision, his choice.

The riots in Ferguson, Missouri, have spawned a heated and, one hopes, productive debate about the “militarization” of the police. While one can argue about the tactics and weaponry used by police, however, there’s little debate about the necessity of cops being armed. The real problem is the…

At this writing, it seems that the hundreds of trucks sent by Moscow with supplies for the residents of Eastern Ukraine will be delivered without further incident. For over a week, the long convoy wended its way toward the Ukrainian border, carrying with it the prospect for a spike in tensions…

Populism, that ever-lurking and always problematic phenomenon in American politics, is especially galling to liberals when it breaks from the right, as it has done during the last few years in the form of the Tea Party. Conservative populism disorients and frightens liberals (almost as much as the…

Teaneck, N.J.

The Internet may yet become a high-minded place, if our good friends at the Foundation for Constitutional Government have any say in the matter. To complement their websites devoted to important contemporary thinkers (Walter Berns, Irving Kristol, Harvey Mansfield, James Q. Wilson), they have now…

During the six weeks of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, Hamas has used human shields—women and children—to protect its infrastructure in Gaza. This tactic is meant either to deter Israel from striking at the rockets, attack tunnels, and terrorists that threaten it, or—and for Hamas this is much…

In the end, Jim Foley died just as he wanted to live, pursuing a story that mattered on the front line of hard news journalism. In Afghanistan, Libya, and finally Syria he recorded the horror, chaos, and occasional compassion that define the war on terror. But it was his gruesome killing on the…

A foolish optimism about human nature can’t withstand even a nodding acquaintance with history. If you’re of a certain age you may well remember seeing this photo. It was published years ago in Life magazine, among other places. And once seen, it is not easily forgotten. The Scrapbook retrieved the…

The influence of Eastern Orthodox Christianity on composer Arvo Pärt’s music is undisputed: His minimalistic music draws from obvious religious inspiration. The specifics are less straightforward, though, leaving his compositions feeling more abstractly spiritual than overtly doctrinal. Despite the…

Ferguson, Mo.

Queens, N.Y.

On Tuesday, August 19, an American citizen, James Foley, was savagely killed. The group of jihadists known as ISIL had previously killed and brutalized tens of thousands of non-Americans. But they killed Foley because he was an American. They titled the grotesque video of this particular act of…

All of a sudden, people have noticed that we are in trouble, and many are saying it isn’t the president’s fault. All the bad news, from Iraq to Ukraine, from Libya and Syria to the Mexican border, just seems to have happened: Obama was standing there, golfing or shaking hands with donors, and, like…

If you know that Boyhood has been rapturously received as a revolutionary work in the annals of American filmmaking, it is almost sure to disappoint you. I know this, because I saw it two weeks after it opened and it disappointed me, even though I knew I was seeing something no other filmmaker had…

If at first you don’t secede, try, try again. This might be the motto of Alex Salmond’s Scottish National party, which since 1934 has been advocating the proposition that Scotland should be an independent country, governed not from London but from Edinburgh and able to make its own policy decisions…

"I taught the first course on rock music for credit in an American university (1970, Ball State University). I taught a course in Phil Spector at a junior college in 1974. It was therefore with great interest, indeed delight, that I .  .  . ” (letter from John Mood of San Diego, Times Literary…

In 1884, John Zach Means and his wife Exa acquired a ranch just outside the tiny town of Valentine, Texas. The spread was called the Y6, after a cattle brand he had designed, and the couple’s move there was the happy culmination of several years of despair and hard work. 

In 2007, I went to work as a speechwriter in a political office. Although my boss didn’t care much for my writing, the rest of the staff considered me an authority on grammar and usage. I was the writer, they seemed to reason, so I must understand the deep magic of the English language. Nearly…

When writers become famous, it is easy to forget that they were once obscure, and sometimes very poor. Yet with few exceptions—Homer, Tacitus, Omar Khayyam, Jonathan Safran Foer—even the greatest writers had to slave away at menial positions before their careers took off and they could support…

Gary Saul Morson is a rarity in American academia. The holder of an endowed chair at Northwestern University and winner of prestigious literary awards such as the René Wellek Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association nevertheless admits publicly that he most often turns to…