October 2014

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer John McCormack on why three is the magic poll number for the GOP's hopes in retaking the Senate.

During a speech in Rhode Island today, President Obama called for more taxpayer-spending on pre-school in order to "make sure that women are full and equal participants in our economy" and said the following: 

News on the economy had been promising these last few days, especially the GDP increase in the last quarter.  Today comes a not-so-good report on consumer spending.  As Victoria Stilwell reports at Bloomberg:

Barbara Comstock, the Republican House candidate for Virginia’s diverse Tenth congressional district in the suburbs and exurbs of Washington, lost the first thing she ever ran for: a spot on her high school cheerleading team. “After that, I was like ‘I’m never doing anything again,’” she jokes.

If one objective of the bombing campaign in the Mideast was to stop – or, at least, reduce – the flow of fresh recruits to ISIS, then it has failed. As Greg Miller of the Washington Post reports

In the fight against ISIS in Iraq, Anbar province is decisive and to turn things around there:

Republican Scott Brown took issue with Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen's characterization of the American military operations in the Middle East as an "occupying force" in the two candidates' final debate Thursday evening. The New Hampshire politicians were debating the use of U.S. troops against…

Bad news for Senator Udall.  As reported in The Hill, a big-time, high-profile, hero to Colorado is backing his opponent, Rep. Gardner. It isn’t the money. Another five grand, more or less, won’t swing the election. What is ominous for the Udall operation is the identity of the donor.  

Harry Reid is now "begging" for support. He made the comment in an email to supporters of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Two new polls show Republican Ed Gillespie closing in on Democratic incumbent Mark Warner in the Virginia Senate race. Christopher Newport University, which had Warner up 12 points earlier in the month in its survey, now has Warner's lead down to 7.

President Obama hasn't spent that much time on the campaign trail this election season. But that's not because he doesn't like it -- indeed, he does. 

Since Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012, immigration reform has been at the top of the national agenda. Of course, very little has come of it—apart from some legally dubious executive actions, as well as a lot of blather from pundits, left and right, who seem to have no understanding of the…

Charlotte Brontë liked to let her hair down linguistically from time to time. In an unpublished piece of early fiction, she imagines a scene at a horse race in which the owner of the defeated favorite suspects that his horse was doped. Ned Laury introduces an underworld informer, Jerry Sneak—the…

Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu told NBC's Chuck Todd that she has had to work harder for her reelection to the U.S. Senate because the South has "not always been the friendliest place for African Americans."

Chuck Todd of NBC News is traveling the country, talking to voters, and generally filing interesting reports. But in his report on Arkansas, he repeats a familiar, and false, trope:

Democrats up for reelection – especially in the much, much watched and analyzed Senate races – are keeping their distance from President Obama.  Obviously and understandably.  But this isn’t sitting well with the White House.

Durham, N.C.

The camera caught many empty seats at a rally Hillary Clinton is headlining in College Park, Maryland:

It looks like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is bracing for a bad election next week. At least, that's what they're openly telling supporters.

Paul McLeary of Defense News writes that the administration has a way of accounting for what went wrong in Iraq.  According to Deputy National Security Adviser Anthony Blinken (a rare "top administration official" willing to go on record):

Just five days out from Election Day and Vice President Joe Biden is again campaigning for Iowa's Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Braley -- but not in Iowa. Thursday afternoon, Biden heads to the 8th Floor in New York City according to the official White House schedule for a 6:00 p.m. event:

Senator Jeff Sessions will soon release this statement in response to a report in the Wall Street Journal that details President Obama's plans to unilaterally implement amnesty.

Bloomberg is reporting that:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Hogan has a 5-point lead over Democrat Anthony Brown in a surprisingly close race in Maryland, according to a poll conducted on behalf of the Hogan campaign and obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Today, in an article for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Apple CEO Tim Cook makes an announcement: "I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me."

The indicators for the economy are looking good.  For those who view the world through a political prism, this news may be coming too late to help the president and his party in the mid-terms.  And for those whose view is long and wide, the skies are not entirely blue.  There is the matter of labor…

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently suspended all background investigations on current and prospective Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees due to security concerns over Personally Identifiable Information (PII). The information is revealed in newly released documents…

Gregg Ritchie, head coach at George Washington University, says that the Royals have more of their game-changers going into tonight’s game than the Giants do. With pitching, as my former GW teammate explains, the two clubs are basically even. Royals’ starter Jeremy Guthrie and his Giants…

The fact that the Royals and the Giants have pushed the World Series to a game seven is evidence the two clubs are very evenly matched. Even tonight’s probable starters, Tim Hudson for the Giants and Jeremy Guthrie for the Royals, are similar style pitchers. Top velocity for both is around 90-92…

Laura Barron-Lopez of the The Hill is reporting that:

A candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, after a debate with his opponent, said that:

Editor’s note: In the final debate between Maryland gubernatorial candidates Anthony Brown (D) and Larry Hogan (R), one contender flubbed the name of the state’s second-largest city. “When I travel around the state of Maryland, whether I’m in Oakland, whether I’m in Cumberland, whether I’m in…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the controversy over an anonymous U.S. official's comment that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a "chicken****".

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker leads his Democratic opponent Mary Burke 50 percent to 43 percent among likely voters in the final Marquette University Law school poll. The results come as a surprise to many, as the last Marquette poll showed the race tied, and three other pollsters show the…

The AP is reporting that:

Tom Cotton, the Republican candidate for Senate from Arkansas, is calling on President Obama to renounce the "vulgar" attack on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu which was expressed by an anonymous administration official in a recent Atlantic article.

As the Soviet Union maintained Dachas for the nomenklatura, so our Park Service keeps a nice little “cabin” in the Tetons for use by the political class, as revealed by some diligent muckraking by Time. 

The belief that the prime minister of Israel is "chickenshit" is "not the administration's view," a spokesperson for the National Security Council says in a statement. Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic reported Tuesday that a "senior administration official" viewed Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime…

Time magazine has a cover story out that's causing a fair amount of outrage, but for all the wrong reasons. The story is headlined, "Rotten Apples: It's nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. Some tech millionaires may have found a way to change that." Since then, some 70,000 people signed an…

Two Illinois voters say their attempts to vote early for Republicans on an electronic voting machine were registered as votes for Democrats—and they say have the video evidence to prove it. 

The Washington Post reports:

Producers may be apprehensive about economic prospects, but consumers are upbeat.  As Danielle Trubow of Bloomberg reports:

James Jeffrey, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, tells Frontline that "everyone" warned the Obama administration about ISIS--and that they did nothing.

President Obama responded tonight to an immigration heckler in Wisconsin by telling her to protest Republicans:

As President Obama spoke this evening in Wisconsin, the crowd began to file out. Here's video that captures some folks leaving, even as Obama's voice can be heard in the background:

Last week Gregg Ritchie, head baseball coach at George Washington University, was talking about what happens when a baseball team strikes out more than seven times in a game. The more you whiff the less chance you have of winning, explained Ritchie. Sunday night’s game showed just how accurate that…

The boss tells Politico what Washington can get done in President Obama's last two years in office:

The ISIS campaign in Iraq proceeds where it cannot be seen and meets little resistance.  The U.S. says it has a plan by which government forces will go on the offense and retake lost territory … beginning in a few months.  Meanwhile, as Susannah George of FP reports:

Greg Orman--the "independent" Kansas Senate candidate running with the backing of national Democrats--was asked on October 9 how he would vote on the two abortion bills most likely come to the Senate floor during the next six years (the No Taxpayer-Funding for Abortion Act and the Pain-Capable…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on his editorial "An Election About Everything."

The Obama administration is suddenly a champion of states' rights when it comes to the Ebola quarantine controversy.

Did Rand Paul just become a supporter of George W. Bush’s freedom agenda? “The world does not have an Islam problem,” Paul explained a few days ago. “The world has a dignity problem, with millions of men and women across the Middle East being treated as chattel by their own governments.” Such words…

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren praised her fellow Senate colleague Jeanne Shaheen on Tuesday's episode of The View, saying the New Hampshire Democrat is "working hard for the people of Vermont."

The number for September orders of durable goods is one of three that were anticipated as indicators of where the economy is headed … or if it is merely treading water. (Housing prices and consumer confidence are the others.) Expectations were for a modest increase in durables after a bad number…

If you were a member of the Church of Political Correctness and watching ESPN’s Monday Night Football last night (say someone had tied you to a chair and forced it upon you) … well for whom would you have been rooting?  

On Sunday, the leaders of Hong Kong’s democracy protests abruptly scrapped a poll of protester sentiment they had announced just days earlier. The idea of the poll had been to get protesters’ reactions to two bones thrown to them by the Hong Kong government in televised talks held on October 21.   

Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis was called "Uncle Tom" at a recent Senator Kay Hagan rally in North Carolina. Hillary Clinton was also on hand to help rally Democrats in support of Hagan--and the possible presidential candidate specifically praised the speaker who made the questionable…

The federal government is taking New York City to court. "Manhattan U.S. Attorney Files Healthcare Fraud Lawsuit Against Computer Sciences Corp. And The City Of New York For Orchestrating A Multimillion-Dollar Medicaid Billing Fraud Scheme," reads a headline from the Justice Department's press…

As the American public is still learning about the Ebola threat and how it may affect their lives, at least one reporter has apparently just about hit her limit. At the end of a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) conference call on Monday, Delthia Ricks, Newsday's senior health writer and medical…

Without offering an alternate theory for President Obama’s 42 percent approval rating — which was about the same even before it became obvious his foreign policy had tanked — the mainstream media is insisting that Obamacare isn’t driving this election.  But Republican ads in Senate races say…

The latest episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol features political scientist and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute Christopher DeMuth:

If you work for the government and you don’t stay on the straight and narrow, then you risk being told to go home and take some time off … with pay and benefits.  Might be for three months to a year – time enough to catch up on those overdue home improvement project.  Could be for one to three…

Senator Mark Udall has been in the battle for his political life for months, as his Republican challenger Cory Gardner has gained and overtaken the Colorado Democrat in the polls. Gardner has led Udall in 11 of the past 12 polls, and has a 3.2-point lead in the Real Clear Politics average of…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on the state of play, eight days out from the midterm elections.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette endorses Tom Cotton for U.S. Senate:

The Peter Drucker sallies about how government “can only do two things well: wage war and inflate the currency” is being severely tested.  Today, we see this headline, over a piece by Jonathan Spicer of Reuters 

The states of Illinois, New Jersey, and New York have all issued mandatory Ebola quarantine for certain travelers, and the White House doesn't like this one bit. According to the New York Times these states are being pressured to loosen their quarantine restrictions:

The possibility of Ebola breakouts in major American cities raises difficult questions of public health, public safety, and civil liberties. So it is no great surprise that states' efforts to quarantine persons exposed to the decision would be met with threats of federal lawsuits. More interesting,…

The president insists that his programs have done great things for the economy and that, while he is not on the ballot in next week’s elections, his policies are. Well, as Mike Dorning of Bloomberg reports:

The grandson of former president Jimmy Carter wants to run for the White House himself, says Georgia governor Nathan Deal. Jason Carter, a young Democratic state senator from Decatur, is challenging the Republican Deal in a close race. Speaking at a rally in Dahlonega, the 72-year-old Deal told the…

Senator Kay Hagan was interrupted by immigration activists during a recent campaign speech who said the North Carolina Democrat was "anti-immigrant."

The Republican National Committee announced today a new ad campaign arguing "Obama's Foreign Policy Is on the Ballot" in next week's election. 

The American public has resisted the metric system for decades, but that has not discouraged the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from sinking $37,950 into two more episodes of a "motion-comic" video series called "The League of SI Superheroes." (SI stands…

In the latest wave of the New York Times/CBS/YouGov poll, Cory Booker leads Jeff Bell 51-39.

Since the Cold War ended more than 20 years ago, the left in general, and the media in particular, have tended to regard it as a kind of cosmic joke: hysterical American reaction—indeed, overreaction—to the peaceful postwar existence of the Soviet Union and other Communist states, including China.…

What difference will it make if the Republicans win the Senate and hold the House in November? The House can already block Democratic legislation Republicans do not like, and President Obama would still be able to veto Republican legislation he does not like. The Republicans are talking of a…

Belgium is on the verge of executing its first murderer by lethal injection. Well, not exactly “executing.” The state isn’t going to kill convicted murderer/rapist Frank Van Den Bleeken for his crimes. Rather, it is helping him be euthanized. By a doctor. At a hospital. To which he was transferred…

This deft, revelatory collection opens with a poem about the poet’s mother, in which Richard Greene speaks of shapes of memory from which she can / never turn away. Integral to his own “shapes of memory” is familial love, and Greene, who has written a brilliant critical biography of Edith Sitwell…

Whenever a French president visits Washington and White House speechwriters need to come up with something nice to say about France, Lafayette is cited as the man who came to America’s aid in its war of independence. Whether this produces the intended emotional echo in the visitor’s mind is a…

Charlie Chaplin was born in London on April 15, 1889, although no birth certificate has ever been located. We are certain of the date because his proud mother placed an announcement in a music hall newspaper. 

There has been much head scratching over the years about the essence of Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Now with another member of Obama’s cabinet, former defense secretary as well as CIA director Leon Panetta, offering up a memoir of disagreement and disenchantment, it’s clear that the…

You can tell a lot about a society by its taboos. Several weeks ago, America reeled when Adrian Peterson—the great NFL running back of his generation—was indicted on charges of “reckless or negligent injury to a child.” Peterson is alleged to have disciplined his son by “whooping” him—these are…

As a rule, one should not panic at whatever crisis has momentarily fixed the attention of cable news producers. But the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which has migrated to both Europe and America, may be the exception that proves the rule. There are at least six reasons that a controlled, informed…

The Ebola outbreak understandably has Americans on edge. How the Obama administration has redefined the expectations of government competency for even the most cynical among us has a lot to do with it. Rather than stepping up to meet a potential health crisis, the government is instead deflecting…

Although he’s revered as a great classic writer, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) is an author we read because we want to, not because we have to. He’s intimate, erudite, chatty, and expansive—qualities well suited to the peculiar genre he essentially created. While puttering around his tower…

Baseball heals. That’s the only way The Scrapbook can explain Keith Olbermann’s transformation. How else did Bush Derangement Syndrome’s patient zero wind up complimenting the 43rd president? After nearly a decade of insulting George W. Bush, Olbermann now says he’s a fan. Actually his praise was…

A Gallup survey earlier this month showing that Americans oppose Obamacare by a margin of 53 to 41 percent was  the 150th poll listed by Real Clear Politics during President Obama’s second term to find Obamacare unpopular. The number that found it to be popular was zero. 

Many of the world’s most serious security threats are enabled—directly or indirectly—by revenues from the high oil prices (about $100 per barrel) prevalent in world markets in recent years. If these prices were reduced substantially (e.g., by 20-30 percent), the liquidity that fuels the threats…

Nobody ever said to “beware of sisters bearing gifts.” So, when my younger sister offered  me her car as she headed off to the Peace Corps a couple of years ago, I leapt at the opportunity. 

Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire couldn't hold back at her debate with Republican challenger Scott Brown. While Brown was giving his closing remarks at a forum in Manchester Sunday, Shaheen interrupted him, eliciting boos from GOP partisans in the crowd.

California senator Dianne Feinstein told CNN this morning that she'd be "flattered" if Michelle Obama is considering a run for her Senate in 2018:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Ethan Epstein reading his essay "Wheels of Fortune."

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, is being sent to Ebola-infected nations. The travel plans were announced this evening on Twitter.

Hillary Clinton, doing her no-bull, forceful leader number, tells an audience:

No longer do innovators style themselves “entrepreneurs.” Too French-effete sounding. Nor do these creators call themselves “capitalists.” Too likely to displease liberal friends who associate that label with exploitation of someone or other. Today’s innovator class prefers “disrupter.” Nothing…

Bill Roggio and Caleb Weiss write, at The Long War Journal, that:

When the College Board released a revised framework for Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH), it ignited controversy. Conservative critics objected that the standards evinced a fixation with identity politics, a bias against free enterprise, and a clear partisan preference. Liberal defenders…

Now with the Royals tying the World Series Wednesday night 1-1, things are really getting hot: Two San Francisco radio stations have removed the song “Royals” from their play lists. The smash hit from the seventeen-year-old Kiwi songbird Lorde was inspired by a 1976 photo of Royals’ hall-of-fame…

A pair of polls on the Georgia Senate race continue to show a close race between Republican David Perdue and Democrat Michelle Nunn.

As any visitor to New York City discovers, the Big Apple isn’t the best place to get a hotel room. Rates top $300 per night, the highest in the country, and supply is quite limited.

Yesterday, we asked: Does Chris Christie have Scott Walker’s back?

Democrat Vincent Sheheen of South Carolina referred to his Republican opponent, sitting governor Nikki Haley, as a "whore" in an apparent slip of the tongue during a recent campaign rally.

Senate candidate Greg Orman of Kansas has been accused by Republicans as a Democrat-in-Independent's clothing, which explains why Orman is surrounding himself with Republicans in the final days of his campaign against GOP incumbent Pat Roberts. Here's a report from the Lawrence Journal-World:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the 2014 elections and the GOP's chances to retake the Senate.

The White House announced that President Obama will meet with Nina Pham, the Texas nurse who just recovered from Ebola, later today:

This morning, the better half has some thoughts the media coverage of the Ebola epidemic. Her point is that everytime people start to ask reasonable questions about Ebola, the media lecture them not to panic. The truth is that nobody's really panicked about the Ebola epidemic (yet), but by…

With less than two weeks to Election Day, the Democrats are bringing out Gloria Steinem to help rally their troops.

The news of an Ebola patient in New York has stimulated a predictable response from government officials and the media:

Foreigners should always stay out of North Korea. By traveling there, after all, tourists provide financial support to a manifestly evil regime. Moreover, they put themselves at risk – two American tourists are currently being held hostage there. (A third was released from captivity just this…

Dr. Mary T. Bassett, commissioner of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, claimed in a press conference last night that the latest Ebola patient had self-isolated since returning from Africa. Later, she admitted that in fact the patient had spent a lot of time in public and with other…

The New York Times reports:

Sergeant at Arms Kevin Vickers was given a standing ovation in Canada's Parliament yesterday for allegedly killing the invading terrorist the day before. Watch the moving ovation here:

Republican governor Nathan Deal has spent much of his race for reelection talking up Georgia’s progress since he took office in 2011: targeted tax reform, economic development, a bigger education budget. His ads tout that the state has added 175,000 jobs and make the vague, hard-to-verify claim…

At long last, the conventional wisdom about the 2014 midterms is here: It’s an election about nothing.

Like all charming and physically imposing persons, Ben Bradlee had an enormous head.

As a lifelong white person​—​or Person Without Color, for the more sensitively inclined​—​I have nothing against white people. I mean, sure, at this late date in their history, I’m all too aware of the dubious and disheartening white-people statistics. Nearly all Prius owners, Vineyard Vines…

I don’t like to make too much of all the celebrity heirs who, in an extremely down media market, somehow keep on snagging major journalism gigs. It makes me sound bitter and envious and uncharitable, all of which I sort of am. But how can anyone help it? All the so-called smart people who run the…

Vladimir Nabokov, who knew a thing or two about the subject, once wrote, “Style is not a tool, it is not a method, it is not a choice of words alone. Being much more than all this, style constitutes an intrinsic component or characteristic of the author’s personality.” I happened to run across this…

Eric Nelson is a young historian of political thought at Harvard whose basic ambition is to transform every topic he studies. He has published three books in the past decade, and each seeks to transform a major subject in the study of early modern (16th-18th century) political ideas. His first…

Is New Jersey governor and Republican Governors Association chairman Chris Christie undercutting Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's reelection effort? That's a question a number of influential Wisconsin Republicans have been asking behind the scenes over the past week after an October 16 Associated…

A Georgia man confronted Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn over the rising cost his health care plan because of Obamacare:

The New York Times has discovered something that many already knew. But they knew it from various defects of character – because they were racists or right-wingers or some other primitive life form. So what they knew wasn’t fact or truth but superstition or prejudice.  The headline on…

First Lady Michelle Obama incorrectly referred to Democratic senator Mark Udall as a "fifth-generation Coloradan" while at a campaign stop Thursday. Udall, who is running for reelection, was born in Tucson, Arizona, and is the son of the former Arizona congressman and presidential candidate Morris…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on national security and the 2014 elections.

Yesterday, the Washington Post had a lengthy report on how former CIA director Leon Panetta was sending out copies of his book nearly a month before it cleared the CIA's internal revue process to ensure that no sensitive national security information was being revealed. According to the Post,…

Barack Obama called into an Atlanta radio station to urge Georgia voters to elect Michelle Nunn to the U.S. Senate so that the president can "keep on doing some good work."

House Committee on Homeland Security chair, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, released this statement on the attack yesterday in Ottawa, Canada:

After the latest terror attack in Israel, the State Department issued the following statement urging all sides -- which would include Israel, the victims here -- to remain calm:

Headline over a long, detailed Kimberly Kindy and Sari Horwitz pice in the Washington Post:

The American public often rails about bureaucracy. It is not difficult to fathom why. Who amongst us has not fumed while standing in a long line at an understaffed post office? And how many of us have thrown up our hands in frustration at the complexity of income tax instructions and outsourced the…

While some in Congress have warned that Russian involvement in Ukraine portends a "looming" new cold war, Obama administration officials have for the most part brushed off the comparison. The president himself flatly said in July in response to a reporter's question regarding the Ukrainian…

The Republican Governors Association is going all in for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in the home stretch of the 2014 campaign. According to a GOP source familiar with RGA spending, the organization has reserved $4 to $5 million in TV ad time for the final two weeks before the election. 

The Republican Governors Association is going all in for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in the home stretch of the 2014 campaign. According to a GOP source familiar with RGA spending, the organization has reserved $4 to $5 million in TV ad time for the final two weeks before the election. 

Speaking earlier today in Illinois, Vice President Joe Biden praised Governor Quinn -- and, more importantly, his mother. "I like guys because of their moms," said Biden.

With a grim two-word subject line "dire situation," Connecticut Democrats are sounding the alarm. The email pleads: 

During his visit to Washington this week, Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya'alon has spent part of his time criticizing Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, warning about the dangers of a bad nuclear deal with Iran—and highlighting the problems with Turkey.

A new poll of the U.S. Senate race in Colorado by USA Today and Suffolk University finds Republican Cory Gardner with a seven-point lead over first-term Democratic incumbent Mark Udall. The poll found 46 percent of likely Colorado voters say they prefer Gardner, while 39 percent say they prefer…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on the 2014 elections.

The Chinese want a modern and formidable blue-water Navy.  Hard to be a serious global player without one.  Equally difficult, it seems, to create one. Especially the aviation component, where the United State has no equals and, in fact, no other nation even comes close.  

The war in Afghanistan is nearing an end – the American part, at any rate – but there is no letup in the fighting and dying of Afghan soldiers. Time, quoting from a Wall Street Journal story, reports that:

Here's video that captured the sound of gunfire inside the Canadian Parliament:

Andrew Cuomo's book is a dud. The memoir, released last week, has sold 945 hardcover copies in its first week of sales, Amy Chozick of the New York Times reports.

Healthcare.gov continues to prepare for open enrollment beginning on November 15, hoping to avoid a repeat of the disastrous launch in 2013. Apparently the preparations include extra "scheduled" maintenance. Wednesday morning, the site displayed a message reading, "The system isn’t available right…

Entering the final fortnight of the Senate races, something of a pattern has started to develop. Republicans are leading in the Real Clear Politics average of recent polling in all states that were to the right of the national average in the 2012 election (which President Obama won by 4 points),…

Washingtonians and visitors seeking to attend Veterans Day ceremonies or to pay their respects to the fallen at Arlington National Cemetery this year will need to allocate extra time in getting there. 

Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz wouldn't "predict" a Democratic takover of the House:

Democratic Senate candidate Kay Hagan skipped tonight's debate in North Carolina. Here's video of the debate opening:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on the state of the polls, two weeks out from the midterm elections.

Recently, some media commentators have argued that, rather than the product of a simple confrontation between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Syria and Iraq, the rise of the so-called “Islamic State” should be perceived as an eruption into those countries of Wahhabism, the only interpretation of Islam…

Amidst the cliched rhetoric decrying “unpatriotic” companies that accompanied the Obama administration’s recent move to address corporate inversions, it was easy to miss the fact that there is relatively little of substance that can be remedied via regulation alone, even with Treasury Secretary…

A letter from a physician who practices and teaches at a medical school in New York, who introduced himself to the boss at last night’s protest of the Met's performance of the "Death of Klinghoffer." 

Louisiana Democratic senator Mary Landrieu, who's been under fire for living full-time in Washington, D.C. rather than her home state, recently told supporters that her lavish home is actually quite modest:

From last week, another example of PolitiFact's incredible bias:

With the World Series opening tonight in Kansas City, the Giants are no doubt feeling their oats. They’re coming off of a three-homerun performance in their game five win over the St. Louis Cardinals, which landed them their third World Series appearance in five years. However, the Giants should be…

Ron Klain, the Democratic political operative tapped by President Obama to run the federal government's response to the Ebola virus outbreak, recently worked as a political adviser to Michelle Nunn, the Georgia Democrat running for the U.S. Senate. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

Tom Harkin, the longtime Democratic senator from Iowa who is retiring at the end of the term, spoke with the New York Times about the Hawkeye State's Senate race. Harkin seems to take it as a given that Republicans will gain control of the Senate, even as his fellow Iowa Democrat, Bruce Braley, is…

Eighteen months ago Britain’s Nigel Farage was a political curiosity, head of a fringe party, gadfly member of the European Parliament, an ex-commodities broker who never went to college—dismissed as a nutcase by ruling elites in London and Brussels. Today he’s being touted as a future prime…

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have made increasing the federal minimum wage one of their marquee issues during campaign appearances leading up to the 2014 elections. After pushing for an increase to $9.00/hour up through 2013, the president moved the bar up to $10.10/hour in his…

Last night at a Democratic fundraiser in Chicago, President Obama mentioned that there are some "unpaid bills" on his desk in Chicago--which he left when moved to the White House after winning the presidential election in 2008. Here's what he said:

Given that the Democrats are in total disarray heading into November, it's not surprising liberal groups are making all sorts of dire warning about how it will rain brimstone when the GOP takes control of the Senate. However, this item from MoveOn.org really takes the cake:

President Obama discussed the election and how "all" the Democrats running away from him "have supported my agenda" in an interview with Al Sharpton earlier today:

President Obama discussed the Ebola virus in remarks at Democratic fundraiser in Chicago this evening. Ebola "has been the only story here in the United States for the last couple of weeks," Obama said.

Victorino Matus, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

A new poll of the New Hampshire Senate race from Suffolk University finds Republican challenger Scott Brown within three points of Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen. According to the poll of likely voters, Shaheen has 49 percent support to Brown's 46 percent support. Shaheen's job…

The Democrats "are completely out of ideas." That line isn't from the head of the Republican National Committee; it's what the Democrats are saying in their latest fundraising pitch.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Jonathan V. Last on his editorial titled "Six Reasons to Panic."

Hospitals seeking guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on clothing and equipment to use to protect health care workers dealing with known or suspected Ebola patients may have to wait another day for official recommendations. As THE WEEKLY STANDARD noted this morning, hospitals are…

Representatives of the student led democracy protests in Hong Kong are due to enter into a dialogue with the Hong Kong government on Tuesday.  The prospects for success are not good.  The two sides are far apart, with the government saying it will not even discuss the protesters’ chief demand – the…

Rebecca Kaplan of CBS reports that the White House has an explanation for why Ron Klain was appointed "Ebola Czar.”  It’s very simple.  You see:

Amid increasing calls for a travel or visa ban on those trying to enter the United States from West African nations ravaged by the Ebola virus, the federal government continues to be steadfastly opposed. But why? Officials continue to argue that the travel ban would make it more difficult to track…

A day after President Obama appointed Ron Klain as Ebola czar to deal with the potential spread of the virus in this country, the Centers for Disease Control updated its website that contains recommendations for hospitals dealing with known or suspected cases of Ebola. In place of detailed…

President Obama does not want to be a Supreme Court justice. He calls it "too monastic" for his own personality. Besides, in an interview with the New Yorker, President Obama acknowledges that he needs to get out of the "bubble" after what will be eight years as president of the United States.

It is inherently difficult to distinguish between an entrepreneur’s skill and luck, even in retrospect. Peter Thiel, however, is the cofounder of two different billion-dollar technology businesses and the first outside investor in Facebook. If he’s only lucky, I’d like to borrow his rabbit’s foot.

It's a daunting moment for conservatives. To have even a chance for a semblance of a conservative future in the United States, we probably need (1) to elect a GOP Congress in 2014, which (2) does well enough in the majority for the next two years to (3) allow a Republican to win the White House in…

A year before his first inauguration, Barack Obama laid out the objective of his presidency: to renew faith and trust in -activist government and transform the country. In an hourlong interview with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal on January 16, 2008, Obama said that his campaign…

Along with thousands of others, I got an email from Bill Clinton last week. “Hey there,” the former president began. He was raising money for the Democratic candidates. “There’s an election around the corner, so I’ve been traveling around the country to help Democrats who are standing up for the…

Herodotus, the first Greek and thereby the first Western historian, had bad press long before there was anything resembling a press. Aristotle referred to him as a “story-teller,” which was no honorific. What he meant was that Herodotus made things up, another word for which is “liar.” Thucydides…

Apart from the death of a journalist, no more poignant event is ever recorded in the media than the demise of a onetime “antiwar activist.” This was confirmed in the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post last week, where the passing in Budapest of Fred Branfman, 72, was duly noted. 

Once upon a time, military life was familiar to most civilians. The arts rendered it comprehensible even to those who had never served. At midcentury, shows like Mister Roberts (1948) and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1953) were all the rage on the stage, to say nothing of the rush of World War…

Hong Kong

I went to my favorite pen shop in downtown Washington the other day to buy some ink, and on reflecting that the act of riding the subway to buy a bottle of ink had a certain antediluvian quality, I was seized with a very antediluvian idea. I decided that I wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes as…

In 2009, Bryce Harper—then a sophomore at Las Vegas High School and already the best high school baseball player in the nation—made the unusual and controversial decision to forgo his final two years of high school, on the grounds that there was simply no effective competition for him at that…

Sexual liberation is having a nervous breakdown on college campuses. Conservatives should be cheering on its collapse; instead they sometimes sound as if they want to administer the victim smelling salts. 

Minneapolis

As Nicole Curtis says at the beginning of every episode of her number-one HGTV show Rehab Addict, “I’m not your average flipper. .  .  . I don’t just renovate, I restore old homes to their former glory.” 

Since Islam emerged more than 14 centuries ago, Mecca, near the western coast of the Arabian peninsula, has drawn the interest of the world. For Muslim believers, the city and its sacred mosque—which encompasses a high, cubical structure, the Kaaba—are the focus of spiritual devotion as the qibla,…

Last week Reuters ran a story about the movement to do away with the ban on blood donation from gay men in America. In 1983, with the AIDS epidemic raging, the FDA prohibited gay men from giving blood because of fears of increasing transmission of the virus. But the American Medical Association and…

"I don’t think it’s 1940,” the woman in Riga told me in June, referring to the year the Soviets brought their own variety of hell to Latvia. “But then, I wouldn’t have expected 1940 in 1940 either.” And then she laughed, nervously. With Russia’s ambitions spilling across the borders that the…

Cambridge, U.K.

President Obama has had to acknowledge two big lies of the Affordable Care Act: (1) You could keep your health insurance plan; and (2) the HealthCare.gov website would be fully operational at launch. Unless he acts with urgency, he will also be forced to apologize for assuring us that personal data…

The U.S. Senate race in North Carolina calls to mind Henry Kissinger’s notion about the Iran-Iraq war: Could both sides actually lose? 

You’ve probably seen it before—text on a city’s welcome sign that boasts a sister-city relationship, with somewhere you likely haven’t heard of. For example, in The Scrapbook’s backyard, Rockville, Md., has a sibling relationship with Pinneburg, Germany, and Arlington, Va., with San Miguel, El…

In the universe according to Gone Girl, men are no great shakes: They’re inconstant and weak and foolish. But women .  .  . ah, women. They’re smart, resourceful, infinitely clever—and profoundly dangerous. It’s lucky for the financiers of this sizzling domestic melodrama on the model of Fatal…

With about three weeks to go until the midterm elections, where does the battle for Congress stand?

Speaking to the overflow crowd at a campaign rally at Dr. Henry A. Wise, Jr. High School in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, President Obama urged the crowd to make sure "cousin Pookie" voted in November's election.

As President Obama tried to rally Democrats in Maryland, the crowd began to leave. "Remarks are open press, but one unusual thing that fellow veterans of campaign rallies confirm: some in the crowd started leaving as soon as Obama started speaking and by the time he was about 10 minutes in, there…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Philip Terzian reading his personal essay, "I'd Walk a Mile."

Democrat Mark Udall may be trying to have it both ways on the issue of Common Core standards in education. In an interview with ABC-7 News in Denver, the senator from Colorado was asked a series of questions designed to elicit simple, one-word answers. Reporter Marc Stewart asked this: "Is Common…

In the wake of their passage of Obamacare, the Democrats have repeatedly claimed two things: Republicans don’t have an alternative, and in any case the health care debate is over. But a Washington Post editorial published Saturday makes it clear that neither of these claims is true.

On Friday, the White House announced Democratic hack Ron Klain as the point-man on the Ebola crisis. But despite his new role, which is being described as some as the Ebola czar, Klain was not in attendance at the White House meeting on Ebola on Friday.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the October 13th Issue's Books and Arts section.

The brief military career of 44-year-old Hunter Biden, Vice President Joseph Biden's younger son, seems to have ended after one month in the naval reserve. Biden is reported to have tested positive for cocaine use, and was immediately discharged. It was "the honor of my life to serve in the U.S.…

Oh, woe! Ebola has come to America and 150 people from infected countries are landing here every day. ISIS is battering the Kurds, to whom we have not sent the weapons we promised, and will chase the Iraqi army out of Baghdad as soon as they finish taking over Kobani. Europe is headed into still…

A front-page obituary of David Greenglass published this week in the New York Times is seriously flawed. Not only does it contain inaccurate statements of fact, it also misrepresents the views of historians about the Rosenberg atomic espionage case.

Matthew Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon, explains why Republicans look poised to take over the Senate this year:

Democratic senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina was emphatic earlier this week that instituting a travel ban on those attempting to enter the United States from West African nations ravaged by the Ebola virus was "not going to help solve the problem." Hagan's Republican opponent, Thom Tillis, had…

Don’t be surprised if the Giants-Royals World Series is decided by 90 feet. After all, baseball is a series of contests for 90 feet—the distance from home to first, first to second, second to third, and third to home again. The two teams are bidding for the same property for nine innings, both when…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the latest on ebola and the administration's response.

John Kerry says the fight against Ebola could take "decades."

Orange County, N.Y.

A headline in the Wall Street Journal reads, “U.S. Deficit Shrinks to Level Last Seen in ’07.”  The problem with this headline isn’t its accuracy (although it should say ’08 unless it’s speaking as a percentage of GDP).  The problem is that readers are likely to come away with the false perception…

A new ad from Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis of North Carolina targets his Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, for voting for the federal stimulus bill that awarded a grant to a company owned by Hagan's husband. Watch the video below:

Some American and Iranian diplomats have been spending so much time together lately that they're beginning to crack jokes with one another. Even though the subject matter of the talks, Iran's nuclear ambitions, is quite serious, a senior state department official shared a lighter moment with…

One health insurer in Minnesota, once the top seller on the state' s Obamacare-mandated exchange, is expected to raise its premiums between 40 and 60 percent. Small-business health insurance rates are also expected to go up in Minnesota. KSTP-TV reports the story:

Rear Admiral John Kirby appeared at a joint press briefing with spokesperson Jen Psaki at the State Department Thursday and addressed the ongoing airstrikes against the Islamic State (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria. As a number of Pentagon officials have done in recent weeks, Admiral Kirby downplayed the…

Iowa's Democratic senatorial candidate Bruce Braley said during a debate Thursday: "I have always stated, contrary to what Senator Ernst said, that I oppose all late-term abortions that aren't necessary to save the life or health of a mother."

In Whiplash, a dislikable teenager runs afoul of a dislikable adult, and what emerges from their conflict is the movie of the year so far. It’s rare for an American film to offer such an unvarnished portrait of unattractive people, and rightly so: Why would people want to watch? Well, the…

President Obama discussed the proposal to institute a travel ban to protect America from the grown Ebola crisis, but suggested he wasn't in favor of it because it might make Americans less safe:

Vice President Joe Biden's son was kicked out of the Navy after a drug test "after testing positive for cocaine." The Wall Street Journal reported the news.

The Justice Department has released a new, superseding indictment in the government’s case against Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the only suspect held by the U.S. in connection with the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

The Kansas City Royals are hot. With eight straight wins in the postseason, the Royals have the air of a team of destiny. The reality of course is much less magical. The Kansas City club moved on to the World Series for the first time in 29 years not because of divine intervention but because…

Vice President Joe Biden talked about the trouble the middle class is having during the Barack Obama presidency at an event earlier today in Philadelphia:

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana says the federal government should add people attempting to fly to and from Ebola-stricken countries to the no-fly list to stop them from entering the United States. Jindal, a Republican, released a statement reiterating his support for a travel ban from those…

There is no one war and the struggle does not respect borders.  The AP is reporting that:

Lost in the excitement over ISIS, the battle for Khobani, and the possible threat to Baghdad is news of the nation’s longest war, the one in Afghanistan, which the President once called a “war of necessity.”

Floyd Abrams writing in the Wall Street Journal:

First time claims came in on the low side. Unexpectedly so.  Which seems, paradoxically, predictable. 

Republican Cory Gardner leads incumbent Democrat Mark Udall in the fourth straight poll of the U.S. Senate race in Colorado. The new Quinnipiac poll of likely Colorado voters finds Gardner ahead of Udall by 6 points, 47 percent to 41 percent, while 8 percent support an independent candidate. With…

Yesterday’s presentation by the U.S. Treasury was a comical spectacle—at least for those of us with sardonic senses of humor. The good news? The deficit for FY2014 (which ended September 30) was 29 percent lower than the deficit was in FY2013. Increased corporate tax receipts drove much of the…

In speeches designed to fire up Democrats to vote in midterm elections, President Obama has at times described voters in his party as having a "congenital defect." Wednesday, First Lady Michelle Obama suggested the problem might just be that they're sleepy.

North Carolina senator Kay Hagan said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is "giving us great guidance" on how to deal with Ebola virus infections here in the United States. The Democrat, who is up for reelection, praised the CDC and the World Health Organization in a Wednesday press…

A video tracker for the opposition research firm America Rising asked Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn whether she voted for President Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections. Nunn, who is in a close race to fill the open Georgia Senate seat, refused to answer the direct question. 

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on the competitive purple state senate races in Iowa and Colorado, and the competitive races in traditionally red states like Georgia and North Carolina.

So where did it all go wrong for Obama. That’s the big question, asked by Amie Parnes of The Hill:

Republican Joni Ernst of Iowa leads her Democratic opponent Bruce Braley in their race for the U.S. Senate, according to a new poll from USA Today and Suffolk University. Ernst, a state senator, has 47 percent support while three-term congressman Braley earns 43 percent.

Every election year, it seems, there’s a race that catches the political set in Washington by surprise. It’s possible that we’ve already seen the 2014 version of this with the defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor, a result few anticipated and fewer still predicted.

President Obama won't be traveling to New Jersey and Connecticut later today, as he had been planning to do. There he was going to raise money for Democrats up for reelection in November. Instead, Obama is going to be hosting Cabinet members for a meeting on Ebola. 

A new poll of the Colorado Senate race from CNN has Republican challenger Cory Gardner leading sitting Democrat Mark Udall by 4 points. Gardner is earning 50 percent support from Colorado likely voters, his highest rating yet, with Udall earning 46 percent support.

Democrat Fred DuVal of Arizona has made his business experience and knowledge a centerpiece of his campaign for governor. But it appears that either DuVal or a company he co-owns—or both—is in violation of Arizona corporate law. 

Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings said Ebola "may get worse before it gets better." "But," the public official promised, "it will get better."

Democrat Michelle Nunn leads her Republican opponent David Perdue in a new poll of the U.S. Senate race in Georgia. The 11Alive poll, conducted by SurveyUSA, found Nunn with 48 percent support to Perdue's 45 percent.

While the rise of the barbarous Islamic State and the spread of the modern day plague of Ebola has many concerned about the state of civilization here on earth, some at the White House are turning their attention beyond our planet. A Tuesday entry on the White House blog solicits ideas for…

The latest poll of the New Hampshire Senate race shows Republican Scott Brown with a one-point lead over Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen. The New England College poll found Brown with 48 percent support to Shaheen's 46.9 percent.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on ebola in the U.S., the administration's response, and how ebola is impacting close senate races in 2014.

Roll Call reports:

Jeff Bell used to email us to pitch articles for THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Now he emails asking for help for a TV buy in his New Jersey Senate race.

A company owned by the husband of Democratic senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina received taxpayer money for a green energy project through the federal stimulus of 2009, later revising down the project's estimated cost and keeping the difference.

Valerie Richardson of the Washington Times reports:

For reasons known only to National Journal's Ron Fournier, he included this moment in a column on "wince-worthy" debate moments: 

New York governor Andrew Cuomo talked about Ebola this morning and said that "a little anxiety can be healthy."

Virginia senator Mark Warner claimed he did not offer a federal judgeship to the daughter of a Democratic state senator who was about to resign, but he did admit that they "brainstormed" about the idea.

Loveday Morris, writing in the Washington Post about developments in Iraq’s Anbar Provence:

Federal authorities are investigating possible corruption in a Newark government agency that was chaired by Democratic senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. The New York Post has the story:

The headline on an item in Time reads:

Analysis of Congressional Budget Office projections by the Senate Budget Committee finds that Obamacare will increase the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next decade.

Professor Cornel West was "taken into custody" in Ferguson, Missouri earlier today, according to the New York Times:

A new set of polls from High Point University and SurveyUSA have good news Republican candidates for Senate in Colorado, North Carolina, and New Hampshire. The polls of likely voters in all three swing states found Republicans in good positions against incumbent Democrats with just weeks to go…

From Military Times, we learn:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is putting between $6 and 6.5 million into TV ads in North Carolina, Politico reports. The close race between Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan and GOP challenger Thom Tillis has come down to an air duel between the campaigns and their allied independent…

In certain jurisdictions, there are some things you just don’t want to say.  For instance, as Reid Standish of FP reports:

Half of this college football regular season (7 of 14 weeks) is now in the books, and neither of the two standout teams to date has won a conference championship, let alone a national championship, in the past half-century.  Each played in a bowl game in Tennessee last year (the Music City Bowl and…

Vice President Dick Cheney opened up for a nearly two hour interview with Bill Kristol, as part of the latest installment of Conversations With Bill Kristol:

If you've been dying to go to Iran, this might be your chance. The New York Times is selling a 13-day tour of Iran, guided by a Times journalist--Elaine Sciolino--for a mere $6,995.

Following the lead of Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Secretary of State John Kerry Sunday began using the Arabic acronym "Daesh" at times when referring to the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS). Kerry was in Egypt for a meeting with Egyptian foreign minister Shoukry, and spoke extensively about the…

How to introduce students to conservative thought? It’s hard. The colleges and universities aren’t interested. The media and popular culture are hostile. What if young Americans nonetheless become aware of the existence of such a thing as conservative thought? How to convey its varieties and…

During his confirmation hearing in early 2009, Eric Holder declared he would not politicize the Justice Department. Yet throughout more than five years in office, the attorney general has done just that—without objection from President Obama, who obviously  paid no heed to Holder’s promise. Indeed,…

What brought the decades-long Soviet-American confrontation to an end? Here, Ken Adelman stakes out an answer in his book’s subtitle: He maintains that the 1986 summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the critical turning points of the 20th century. Is he right? As director of…

Last week Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to the U.N. General Assembly and the White House to warn against letting Iran become a nuclear threshold state. He may be too late. With the Obama administration walking back its longstanding demand that Iran dismantle its centrifuges, the…

Some winning campaigns are late-breaking. The most famous is Ronald Reagan’s surge in the last two weeks of the 1980 presidential campaign. And some candidates are elected after being far behind. Mitch McConnell trailed Democratic senator Dee Huddleston by as much as 30 percentage points in 1984,…

With this second, and concluding, volume of her biography of Clare Boothe Luce, Sylvia Jukes Morris completes the tantalizing saga of a woman who helped define the “pushy broad” in a century when men made the rules and women made the coffee. The result is an impeccably researched and thoughtfully…

Should it matter to the rest of us that Hong Kong has erupted this past week with demonstrations for democracy? China’s rulers say this is an internal matter. Western leaders, while expressing concern, seem inclined to agree.

In his brief and fascinating essay “Subversion: Teaching a Blue Novel in a Red State” (2006), Professor Jesse Kavadlo identifies a shift in our cultural attitude toward the subversive—particularly among those stationed in the academy. In the 1950s, Kavadlo writes, 

Concussions that lead to degenerative brain disease. Domestic violence committed by oversized men against women and young children. Rampant use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Bullying of the crudest sort.    

The Scrapbook gets a lot of attention-grabbing emails, plaintive appeals from Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Gabby Giffords warning that civilization as we know it is going to end RIGHT NOW (unless we pledge $5 or more to fight Republican extremism before the midnight fundraising deadline). We…

Two years ago, Philip Roth announced, to rapt attention, that he had ceased writing fiction. Then, last May, following a sold-out appearance at the 92nd Street Y, Roth said that he would no longer engage in public readings. “You can write it down,” he said. “This was absolutely the last appearance…

Many youngsters dream of an NBA career, despite warnings from parents and coaches about the meager odds. 

In 2011, James Ceaser reviewed in these pages a posthumous collection of Irving Kristol’s essays, The Neoconservative Persuasion. Ceaser was particularly struck by how interested Irving Kristol had been in religion:

There seems little doubt that 2014 will go down as a truly horrible year for American foreign policy. From the Russian seizure of Crimea and further irregular incursions into eastern Ukraine, to the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, to a worsening security problem in Afghanistan ahead of an…

Right now at your local multiplex, Denzel Washington is appearing in The Equalizer, a lousy picture in which he is required to display almost supernatural killing skills—and he is entirely believable even though the movie is not, even for one second. You might say he’s playing Liam Neeson, or at…

The great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun centered his understanding of history on asabiyya, which is perhaps best translated as esprit de corps mixed with the will to power. In his masterpiece, the Muqaddima, or Prolegomena, the Arab historian saw as the primary locus of asabiyya the tribe—a…

Sometime in mid-February, after the long winter, baseball fans are delighted to read, usually over a two-paragraph-long story buried beneath the fold in the sports pages, the tag line Pitchers and Catchers Report. They are reporting, of course, to spring training two or three weeks ahead of the…

Hong Kong

Politico recently hired Timothy Noah to be the publication’s labor and employment editor. Noah is a former Slate and New Republic columnist known for being liberal. Of course, most reporters on the labor beat are pro-union, so you’re probably wondering what the news is here. Well, that would be…

The Republican flirtation with dovish noninterventionism is over. It wasn’t much of a fling.

Two weeks ago the Commerce Department released its final estimate of Gross Domestic Product for the second quarter. That marked five years since the recession ended—a period of massive experimentation with expansionary fiscal and monetary policy. While those policies were doubtless well intended,…

Only 12 years ago, the Republic of Turkey was correctly seen as the model of a pro-Western Muslim state, and a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. A strong military bond with the Pentagon undergirded broader economic and cultural ties with Americans. And then, starting with the 2002…

The NBC News crew that was working with the NBC freelance cameraman has been ordered into quarantine after violating their self-imposed separation.

President Obama's former defense secretary, Leon Panetta, called for a White House shake-up this morning on CBS:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the October 13th Issue's Books and Arts section.

New Jersey senator Cory Booker, a Democrat, leads his Republican challenger Jeff Bell by just nine points in a new poll from the Stockton Polling Institute. The survey of likely voters found 48 percent supporting Booker and 39 percent supporting Bell. The results show the race tightening from the…

There are signs that the U.S. Senate race in Virginia, previously considered a long-shot for Republicans and a safe seat for Democrats, could get interesting in the final weeks of the campaign. The incumbent, Democrat Mark Warner, has had a large lead in the polls over his Republican opponent Ed…

Democrat Bruce Braley of Iowa says today's young entrepreneurs differ from his generation's because they "[sit] around in a large space with white boards." The U.S. Senate candidate said these "Millennial" start-up companies in Iowa sometimes think of ideas that go "nowhere."

Anyone who doubts that the deployment of the technologies we have come to call fracking constitutes a revolution should consider this. U.S. oil production has soared by 70 percent in the past six years. American refineries have cut in half their imports from the OPEC cartel, setting off a scramble…

First Lady Michelle Obama got the name of the Iowa Democratic Senate candidate wrong multiple times at a campaign event today:

House Speaker John Boehner has issued this statement in response to a press report indicating that the Obama administration might bring the Gitmo terrorists to America:

The New York Times has a news article today that's ostensibly about concerns the Pentagon is engaged in historical revisionism in a recent attempt to honor Vietnam veterans. Any legitimate concerns, however, are outweighed by the fact the article gives a prominent megaphone to radical liberal…

A new poll of the Arizona governor's race commissioned by a conservative group called American Encore has found Republican Doug Ducey leading Democrat Fred DuVal in what remains a tight race for the open seat. Forty-six percent of likely voters said they support Ducey, compared to 37 percent for…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the 2014 elections.

Experts continue to debate whether the explosion at an Iranian military base at Parchin earlier in the week was an act of sabotage.

At the North Carolina Senate debate earlier this week, Democratic senator Kay Hagan admitted she missed an Armed Services committee hearing in February on the emerging threat of ISIS. Conservative organization Crossroads GPS has a new TV ad running in North Carolina that uses Hagan's explanation…

A new video by the Environmental Policy Alliance mocks Hollywood celebrity Leonardo DiCaprio for being "just another celebrity hypocrite" when it comes to the topic of climate change:

Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA), 13 fellow members of Congress, and over 20 organizations sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in late September urging officials to make sure that schools and libraries receiving federal funds do not block or limit access to websites with…

At a Hollywood fundraiser last night in Gwyneth Paltrow's backyard, President Obama explained that the rich are getting richer. "Most of the gains in our economy go to the folks who are in this lovely yard," Obama said.

The host gushed at the sight of President Obama. The setting was a Democratic fundraiser at the home of Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow.

At a stop today in Santa Monica, President Obama was offered a job at a start-up. From the pool report:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on the 2014 elections.

A new ad from the conservative American Principles Fund targets New Jersey senator Cory Booker, saying the Democrat is a crooked pol who uses his power to "enrich himself."

Roll Call reports that national Democrats are abandoning their candidate John Foust, who is challenging Republican Barbara Comstock in competitive northern Virginia district:

There is a shortage of drones in the theater where the U.S. is engaged against ISIS.  They are needed in another theater of operations, one where we do have troops engaged and are committed to getting them out.  As Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe reports:

Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, refused to answer multiple questions about whether she voted for Democrat Barack Obama for president.

Satellite photographs released yesterday show that the explosion Monday at an Iranian military base at Parchin, where the clerical regime is believed to be working on its nuclear weapons program, did significant damage. The images obtained by Israeli media outlet Israel Defense and “analyzed by…

In a few minutes, Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes of Kentucky will meet with the editorial board of the Courier-Journal in Louisville. Campaign memos recently obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD show how Grimes and her staff prepare for these meetings, requiring the red-state…

Not The Onion: 

Clothes may not make the woman, but according to First Lady Michelle Obama, they don't hurt. Mrs. Obama hosted a "Fashion Workshop" for students and fashion industry representatives at the White House Wednesday, something she said had been a "dream" of hers:

The U.S. is running up against a shortage of surveillance drones to conduct reconnaissance of the various battlefields where it is engaged.  Right now, the theater where its combat troops are directly engaged is getting priority … as it most certainly should be.

For years, it's been axiomatic among political observers that the GOP "brand" is damaged. There is certainly merit to this observation, though it is often bandied about in contexts where there's little to no evidence supporting that conclusion. The media has turned this talking point into such an…

In 2009, Walmart, the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress, and the Service Employees International Union, wrote a pro-Obamacare letter touting “the promise of reduced health care cost increases” that would come from “health care reform.”  Walmart and friends wrote, “We are for shared…

Overland Park, Kansas

Republican Elise Stefanik was attacked in a debate last night by her Democratic opponent, Aaron Woolf, for never having worked a manual labor job. Woolf is a multimillionaire documentary filmmaker and a health food store owner. 

The State Department this week posted a notice that applications are being accepted for Foreign Service Security Protective Specialist positions in the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security to provide a "variety of personal protective services to Department officials and employees at…

The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig has the details of yet another damaging Obama scandal:

Overland Park, Kansas

President Obama addressed the mission to degrade and destroy the Islamic State in remarks today at the Pentagon. "Our strikes continue alongside our partners. It remains a difficult mission," said the commander in chief.

First Lady Michelle Obama used the White House this afternoon to host a "Fashion Education Workshop." When she addressed the various students involved in the East Room, she talked up the the importance of the industry.

Seems Canada is tired of waiting – and waiting – for a decision on the Keystone pipeline and has come up with an alternate plan for moving the oil to market.  As Bloomberg reports:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the latest on the airstrikes against ISIS and the efforts to discredit Leon Panetta after he criticized the White House on foreign policy in his new book.

CNN is reporting that:

At Tuesday night's debate, Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis of North Carolina asked his opponent, sitting Democrat Kay Hagan, which of President Obama's policies she regrets supporting. Hagan stumbled over her words for a few seconds before saying Tillis did not "understand her record" or…

Those looking for good news on the fight against Ebola will not find much encouragement from Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command. As Jim Garamone of Department of Defense News reports, Kelly told an audience at the National Defense University in Washington,…

Democratic senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina told reporters Tuesday evening that she did, in fact, not attend one hearing of the Senate Armed Services committee because she had participated in a Democratic fundraiser the same day. The Democrat was speaking to reporters following her debate with…

If James Carville is still remotely right that “It’s the economy, stupid,” then it’s no wonder that it has been tough sledding for Senate incumbents this fall.  Members of the Senate class that’s up for reelection this year were, of course, elected (or reelected) in November 2008 and began their…

A former spokesman for President Barack Obama, Bill Burton, went on CNN last night to unload on the president's former defense secretary and former CIA director, Leon Panetta. Burton is upset about some of the things Panetta wrote in his memoir, which hit shelves yesterday, and called the long-time…

Nina Rees writes about Campbell Brown taking on the education establishment:

At the outset of the Denver Post's senatorial debate on Tuesday night, a moderator asked Democratic senator Mark Udall the following question: "We know that you support a woman's right to choose, but given the advances in scientific understanding of fetal development, where pregnant mothers know at…

At a DNC fundraiser today, President Barack Obama voiced a concern many Americans might now have. "[T]here’s a sense possibly that theworld is spinning so fast and nobody is able to control it," Obama told Democrats at the White Street Restaurant in New York, New York.

Byron York: Mark Pryor is not used to answering questions.

North Carolina senator Kay Hagan's position on abortion is the target of a new $620,000 TV ad campaign that is being launched today by the Women Speak Out PAC:

Peter Schroeder of The Hill reports that:

Don Carrington of Carolina Journal reports:

Gdansk

President Obama's former defense secretary and CIA chief, Leon Panetta, told MSNBC today that he knew the Benghazi attack was a "terrorist attack" right away:

It is a global economy and Europe is sneezing.  As the FT report:

Arkansas Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor ran for re-election unopposed in 2008. At that time, as far as the Senate was concerned, Arkansas was a one-party Democratic state; there had been exactly one Republican in the U.S. Senate from Arkansas since Reconstruction. Pryor, son of Arkansas senator and…

It turns out, no one in Los Angeles knows who Vice President Joe Biden is. A segment from Jimmy Kimmel:

President Obama may not be, in his words, "on the ballot" this November, but that doesn't mean he's not on the campaign trail. Between the president and Vice President Joe Biden today, the two will be attending no fewer than six Democratic campaign events per the official White House schedule, and…

Reuters is reporting that:

After finishing the season ranked #29 last year, the Arizona Wildcats — hot off their upset win at Oregon — have claimed the top spot in the inaugural 2014 Anderson & Hester Rankings.  The second and fourth spots are held by two schools from Mississippi — #2 Mississippi and #4 Mississippi State —…

Senator Mark Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas facing a tough reelection, can't give a straight answer when asked about President Obama's response to Ebola:

Yesterday, Politico’s Manu Raju filed a report on the independent candidacy of Greg Orman, who is challenging Kansas Republican Pat Roberts for a Senate seat. If you follow the race closely, it does not provide much new information: Orman is cagey about where he stands but clearly goes left; he has…

President Barack Obama addressed the growing Ebola crisis today in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

A Nevada man complained to Vice President Joe Biden that it's hard for small businesses to operate these days:

On Monday, the Supreme Court let lower court rulings stand that redefined marriage in five states--Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Texas senator Ted Cruz, responded to the news by calling the Court's refusal to hear the cases "indefensible" and reiterating his support for an…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Terry Eastland on the Supreme Court's non-decision on gay marriage challenges, and the court's fall agenda.

The Obama administration and the State Department have responded to multiple reports of Americans attempting to join ISIS, the Islamic terrorist group, by setting up a social media campaign called "Think Again, Turn Away." The effort includes a Facebook page and a Twitter account designed to…

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has mocked President Obama's foreign policy of not doing stupid stuff. She has publicly undermined her former boss's Syria policy. But there's one issue where she won't voice an opinion: whether the Keystone XL pipeline should be built.

For over a year, Germans have expressed mounting outrage at revelations of American espionage in their country. The opportunity to shake one’s head and wag one’s finger, especially at uncouth Americans, is one that many Germans enjoy, and Washington’s eavesdropping on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s…

The BBC is reporting that:

Roy Gutman of McClatchy reports:

In an interview with Susan Page of USA Today, Leon Panetta says:

Elise Stefanik delivered this week's Republican address:

When Joe Biden addressed the John F. Kennedy Forum at Harvard's Kennedy School in Boston last Thursday night, he said that the "international order that we painstakingly built after World War II and defended over the past several decades is literally fraying at the seams right now." Thanks to some…

FBI director James Comey talked about Chinese hacking -- and how basically every American company has been targeted -- last night on 60 Minutes. Comey said that it's not the Chinese are so good, it's that they're "prolific." He likened their hacking style to a "drunk burglar." 

The U.S. Navy’s latest shipbuilding plan would see its attack submarine fleet diminish from 55 to 41 boats in the next decade and a half. That decision, confirmed in August, was eclipsed by the advance of ISIL, war in Gaza, and sedition in Ukraine. But the Navy’s announcement—the single-largest…

“Chemistry and Physics Get Million from Loeb,” blared the Harvard Crimson headline. “Funds will modernize laboratory facilities and establish chemistry chairs.” The donor: scientist Morris Loeb ’83. A million dollars is indeed generous. But on the Harvard scale, did it really warrant a Crimson…

The Anglosphere is everywhere. In this engaging and tendentious popular history, Daniel Hannan offers an unofficial update of Winston Churchill’s massive History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956-58). A British member of the European parliament, Hannan has taken upon himself the mission of…

When it comes to military actions, President Obama likes to declare the end of wars, regardless of whether America’s opponents agree that is the case. When it comes to economic wars, he has no need to declare an end, no need for unilateral disarmament, because he never engages in the first place.…

Hilary Mantel is a bestselling British novelist whose works—mostly historical fiction, or novels and stories with contemporary political overtones—are better known in Great Britain than here. Which is surprising, since the 62-year-old Dame Hilary has a knack for self-publicity.

Appearing on a panel September 23 at the Heritage Foundation, National Review’s Kevin Williamson made the following observation (per the account of MSNBC.com’s Suzy Khimm): “ ‘The left is intellectually dead, and where it’s heading towards is authoritarianism,’ said Williamson, citing a Gawker blog…

Whatever our national fascination with decay, when it comes to railroads, Americans seem decidedly to prefer the history of our boom years—of mustachioed barons and valiant strikers, Promontory Point and the Iron Horse—to those of subsequent decline. Books on the early years of rail are ubiquitous;…

I happened to be meeting with Senator Ted Cruz a few hours after President Obama’s United Nations speech Wednesday. We naturally started by discussing the president’s latest oratorical effort. Cruz’s judgment on the speech as a whole? “Unsurprising, but consistently disappointing.” On Obama on…

Boston

"If you see something, say something.” To anyone who uses public transportation, it’s a familiar refrain. Yet while the constant warnings to beware of one’s fellow travelers are but a sign of the times, the message is ambiguous. How do you know what qualifies as “something”? As a subway commuter, I…

On Tuesday, September 23, the U.S. government announced that a new bombing campaign was under way in Syria. The Obama administration had been building the case for airstrikes for weeks. The president and his surrogates repeatedly highlighted the threat posed by the Islamic State (often called the…

The Scrapbook congratulates contributing editor Joseph Bottum on his latest Amazon Kindle Single—The Swinger, a consideration of Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter as his career comes to a close this season.

Tarkio, Mo.

In Manhattan last Tuesday afternoon, The Scrapbook discovered what it’s like to get close to the president, and it stinks. We also now understand how to assemble a huge crowd to admire a presidential motorcade: You simply close 40 blocks of one of the busiest streets in the world. With typical…

Last week brought a reminder of what the United States has lost since Bob Gates and Leon Panetta left the Obama cabinet. Both are straight shooters with a centrist, hardheaded sensibility. 

Age of Ambition opens with a comparison between early-21st-century China and late-19th-century America. Citing such impressive statistics as a sixfold increase in the amount of meat consumed by the average Chinese and a 30-fold rise in annual income, Evan Osnos likens contemporary China to “America…

Although 1 percent, perhaps, of Americans read poetry outside the schoolhouse, and the vast majority would tell you that they do not understand it, we all know more about it than we let on. We know that love poems talk in rhyme about roses; we know that short, spare poems that sound faintly…

Voters in Connecticut’s gubernatorial election this November will face a familiar choice as Republican Tom Foley squares off against Democrat Dan Malloy. Four years ago, in a nail biter for what was then an open seat, Malloy won by 0.5 percentage points, or just 6,404 votes. 

Not long ago I enjoyed a night out at historic Dumbarton House in Georgetown. The 1996 movie version of Jane Austen’s Emma was being shown outdoors, and the event was attended by a large crowd, consisting mostly of women. Jane Austen films, books, and Austen culture in general are almost always…

For years, people have been telling me to read Jonathan Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You (2009), a comic novel about a dysfunctional Westchester family whose secrets and lies and disappointments all come out during a week in which its members gather to mourn the passing of the patriarch.

There has not been a liberal coalition in this country broad and deep enough to enact sweeping leftist legislation since 1937, when Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, the last of the New Deal reforms. Beginning in 1938 the country began a 20-year shift to the right. And, contra the…

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, said tonight that Americans fighting for the Islamic State in Syria are "entitled to come back" because they hold American citizenship:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Julianne Dudley reading her casual essay "Keep Calm and Say Something."

George Will's column on New Jersey Senate candidate Jeff Bell:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the October 6th Issue's Books and Arts section.

Seems the CDC is afflicted with the government habit of treating information as something to hoard and withhold from the citizenry which can’t be trusted to understand or handle it.  As Elise Viebeck of The Hill reports:

The U.S. economy added 248,000 jobs in September, and the unemployment rate dropped to 5.9 percent. But the labor force participation rate continued to fall, average hourly earnings seem frozen, and over 13 percent of workers are either out of work, involuntarily working part time or too…

Speaking today in Joplin, Missouri, VIce President Joe Biden overstated the deaths there in the 2011 tornado by 160,839:

All four members of Arkansas's delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives have signed a letter to President Obama urging the federal government to restrict travel into the country from African nations affected by the Ebola virus outbreak.

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking earlier today at the Chamber of Commerce, talked of inner city Detroit women from the "hood," which is apparently slang for neighborhood:

The Twitter account for Harvard Divinity School published a photograph of a sign outside a campus restroom. The restroom is labeled an "all gender restroom" and the sign adds that "anyone can use this restroom, regardless of gender identity or expression." Here's the tweet:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the ebola outbreak in the United States and the Obama administration's response.

The Council of the Princeton University Community voted on Monday to gut due process for students accused of sexual misconduct. The week before last it was the turn of the faculty to genuflect as the hearse bearing the remains of due process rolled past. This unsavory episode highlights two parlous…

On Thursday, BuzzFeed announced that it would offer a year-long investigative reporting fellowship exclusively for "journalists of color," but BuzzFeed is now allowing journalists of "other diverse backgrounds" to apply as well after the website's editor learned that the original job posting ran…

Speaking at the John F. Kennedy Forum at Harvard Kennedy School in Boston, Massachusetts last night, Vice President Joe Bidengave an extensive rundown of foreign policy challenges and crises that the world and the Obama administration are facing today. Although the vice president expressed…

If Mitt Romney had said in 2012 that a second Obama term would bring not just continued economic uncertainty, but also the re-emergence of international terrorist forces, Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, an illegal immigration crisis, a knife-wielding madman in the White House, a beheading in…

One of the most interesting aspects of the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial race between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli was an ad sponsored by the Conservative War Chest tagging McAuliffe as part of the “Gang of Five.” According to the ad, this group -- Democratic party leaders,…

Vice President Joe Biden sought sympathy with the vice president of the Harvard student body about being second in command: "Isn't it a bitch?" He clarified, "the vice president thing."

The old saying about how banks only loan money to people who don’t need it seems to be coming around again. This after the disaster that followed a policy of lending money, and lots of it, to people who really needed it but weren’t likely to pay it back. 

The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has downplayed the threat of the Ebola virus outbreak as one infected person has entered the United States via a commerical flight. The editors at the New York Sun suggest that the head of the CDC ought to be the next Obama…

The Ebola outbreak has grabbed the attention of the country if not the world in recent days, but the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is also concerned about a more mundane, but still potentially deadly problem: the flu. Thursday, the agency began seeking sources for "Medical…

NBC News chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, and her crew will be flown back to America from Africa to be quarantined, an NBC memo states. The drastic action comes after a freelance member of the NBC crew reporting on Ebola was in fact diagnosed with Ebola.

A fired up President Barack Obama had a message to immigration activists at a dinner this evening in Washington, D.C.: "no force on earth can stop us." 

A new report from the Jewish Telegraph Agency details that the Argentine congress will be fundraising for the terror group Hamas. 

President Barack Obama acknowledged that, while people aren't specifically voting for or against him this November, his "policies are on the ballot."

Aaron MacLean, writing for the American Enterprise Institute, on how military culture "contributes to the American civic character":

For years, China’s friends in the U.S. have argued that it was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened: Taiwan would unify with China under the formula of “one country, two systems.”  Given the mainland’s advantages economically, demographically and militarily, it seemed improbable to…

Jared Meyer writes at e21 that he:

Last year, the New York Times did a glowing profile of the New York Freelancers Union, focused on how it's providing health insurance for a population of workers that typically don't have affordable coverage options: 

Speaking at a Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors event last night, Hillary Clinton decided to talk about Alexis de Tocqueville. The problem? She got it wrong -- by about a hundred years.

The new Quinnipiac poll of the New Jersey Senate contest shows Jeff Bell only 11 points down to Cory Booker, 51 to 40 percent, among likely voters. It goes without saying that a race can move a dozen points in the final five weeks of a campaign—especially when a little known challenger (but one…

After nine years and $247 million, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) new high-tech disaster relief system may not work as intended, according to a new report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Not only is the system unable to…

At the White House Wednesday for bilateral talks with President Obama, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather publicly reminded the president of how seriously Israel takes the threat of a nuclear Iran. President Obama spoke first at a joint press appearance, and said that he and the prime…

President Obama has arrived in Chicago, where he'll spend the night before two public events in his hometown. The president did not travel with his family.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters today that, after the Ebola case in Dallas, the Obama administration reminded border law enforcment agencies of "protocol" to deal with people that appear to have symptoms of Ebola. Earnest also said that there "are screening procedures in…

The Secret Service has been under fire for failing to stop an armed man from jumping the White House fence and running through the president's home, and some critics have begun asking if political correctness is partly to blame for the extent of the security breach.

A poll reported in the Washington Post on September 23 offers positive news for those troubled by the movement to legalize marijuana. It also does not augur well for those pushing more states to follow Colorado and Washington, where legalization is already underway.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on his WSJ op-ed on the desperate measures Harry Reid is using to keep the Senate.

The director of the Secret Service has resigned, according to a press release from DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson:

Iowa Democrat Bruce Braley opposed funding any American military operations in Iraq this year—before he supported them. The three-term House member, who is running for Iowa's open Senate seat in one of the year's hottest races, touted his support for military action against ISIS in Iraq and Syria…

The headline on a Cameron Joseph piece in The Hill reads

Visiting Canada for the first time as Department Homeland Security (DHS) chief, secretary Jeh Johnson addressed the Canadian American Business Council on Wednesday. His remarks focused on existential threats in the world today, particularly in relation to the United States and Canada and the…

Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Mosaic re-publishes "Adam and I: A Story," by Irving Kristol.

Coming in ahead of the unemployment figure for September, which will be released on Friday, and tomorrow’s weekly first-time-claims number, the ADP jobs report might be some sort of harbinger. In the case of today’s number, a happy one, as Paul Davidson of USA Today reports:

In what might possibly be an attempt to relive the success of Hillary Clinton's "Russian reset," the State Department recently awarded a $22,116 contract for "Red Switch Equipment." Which sounds a lot like the device Clinton famously presented to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in 2009 to…

A new poll finds that three-fifths of likely voters support the repeal of Obamacare.  A large plurality — 44 percent — wants to see Obamacare repealed and replaced with a conservative alternative. A much smaller group —16 percent — wants to see it repealed but not replaced. Less than one in three…