November 2014

Bill Kristol, with Cokie Roberts, Donna Brazile, and Jelani Cobb, this morning on ABC's This Week:

Governor Deval Patrick (D, Mass.) says that Hillary Clinton's sense of entitlement is "off-putting to regular voters." Patrick made the comments on Meet the Press: 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Philip Terzian reading Joseph Epstein's casual essay "Everyone Has His Price."

Mark Strand died today at the age of 80. The Montreal-born writer, who served as U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1990-1991, was also a brilliant translator. When I was a junior editor at Ecco Press in the late 80s, Strand used to visit the editor in chief,…

“Give me your tired, your poor … your huddled masses … wretched refuse … the homeless,” implores the Lady in New York harbor. Little can she know that 11.4 million of these “tempest-tost” souls are already here, having arrived illegally, most from Mexico and points south. Some 4-5 million of those…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Hillary Clinton, Harvard Football, and Thanksgiving.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the November 24 issue's Book & Arts section.

You won't find the British royals in the holy land. Elliott Abrams calls it, "The bizarre story of the refusal of British royals to visit Israel, while they are constantly in the Arab world, continues."

Senator-elect Tom Cotton delivers this week's Republican address. The subject? Thanksgiving.

President Obama made an amnesty joke at the annual turkey pardon today at the White House. He also, as a joke, used the same language he used to justify his executive amnesty order talked about the legal authority he had to pardon the turkey, which is traditionally done by presidents the day before…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on President Obama's executive amnesty and how Congress should respond.

Democrats lost white voters without college degrees—a big chunk of the middle class and an important swing vote—by huge margins this month. Why?

Steve Hayes responded last night to the controversial House intelligence Benghazi report:

With just two weeks to go before it announces its 4-team playoff field, the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee is underrating teams from the two strongest conferences — the Southeastern and Pac-12 — and overrating those from the other three major conferences—the Big 12, Big Ten, and…

New York senator Chuck Schumer criticized President Obama's passage of Obamacare. It "made no political sense," Schumer complained yesterday at the National Press Club. “Unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them.” 

Americans have many customs as to what they say, or whether they say anything at all, when they assemble for Thanksgiving. But if you're looking for something unfamiliar but traditional, something both American and Biblical in spirit, here's a suggestion, courtesy of "The Book of Doctrine and…

The White House has argued that President Obama's executive amnesty order last week was made well within the existing law. But in remarks in Chicago tonight, President Obama went off script and admitted that in fact he unilaterally made changes to the law.

In 2005, the King-Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, which served primarily low-income African American and Latino patients, closed its trauma unit. In 2001, D.C. General Hospital, the only public medical facility in the nation’s capital, closed its doors after nearly 200 years. At least 26 urban…

Recently, Rudy Giuliani raised some eyebrows when he got in a heated discussion with Michael Eric Dyson on Meet the Press. He was discussing the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri and said the following: “Ninety-three percent of blacks in America are killed by…

Chuck Schumer, the high-ranking Democratic senator from New York, gave a speech today at the National Press Club in which he said that it "made no political sense" for Democrats to focus on passing the Affordable Care Act. The New York Times reports: 

The latest Quinnipiac polling shows:

Politico reports that Senator Elizabeth Warren is making:

Activist Cornel West called Ferguson the "sad end of the age of Obama." He made the comment in a tweet:

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said Tuesday that he and his fellow Democrats made a mistake in pursuing health care legislation that eventually became Obamacare. Bloomberg Politics's Kathleen Hunter has the story:

The Russians want delivery of their aircraft carrier.  They contracted with the French to build it and a deal is a deal.  But things are not (yet) so far gone that a NATO country is willing to arm the enemy for a few francs.

On Sunday, President Obama tried to explain why his decision to violate his duty to faithfully execute the laws on immigration, in plain defiance of the constitutional separation of powers, won’t pave the way for future presidents to do the same on tax laws.  It didn’t go well:

A New York luxury hotel says it does not knowingly employ illegal immigrants, despite a suggestion by Hillary Clinton that it does. 

New York senator Chuck Schumer will head to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to tell Democrats to "embrace government." 

Attorney General Eric Holder released this statement after news came down that Darren Wilson would not be indicted for the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri:

President Obama, speaking live to the nation after the decision in Ferguson not to indict a police office for the killing of Michael Brown, said that "America isn't everything that it could be."

The prosecutor that announced Darren Wilson will not face charges for the murder of Michael Brown is a Democrat. From the 8th paragraph of a CBS report from the summer:

The family of Michael Brown has released this statement, upon hearing that Officer Darren Wilson will not be indicted for killing Brown in Ferguson, Missouri:

He did it again, as we should have expected.  Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei walked us right up to the finish line, spat on us, and walked away. Months and months of secret and public talks, letters, back channels, and gestures produced nothing of the sort the president, assorted…

President Obama and his team do not intend to go gentle. They have made it clear that they are determined not to govern like proper wounded ducks and have, instead, come out snarling.

The Weekly Standard has a full-time position available for an editorial assistant. Duties will include fact-checking, research, and proofreading.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Chuck Hagel's firing and the Obama administration's continuing appeasement of Iran.

The resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel creates a golden opportunity for the new Republican majority in the Congress: not only will the hearings on Hagel’s replacement be a natural venue for reviewing the defense reductions and many retreats of the Obama years, but they provide a forum for…

Today we learned that it has been impossible to reach an agreement with Iran over its nuclear weapons program. Even a short "framework" agreement or one-pager was beyond reach. And this, despite the extension of the talks from the original deadline last spring.

The Emergency Committee for Israel calls for Congress to "reimpost" Iran sanctions and to "limit the president's authority to waive sanctions."

The Central Intelligence Agency repeatedly tortured suspected terrorists, regularly lied about it to Congress and the White House, and, for all the pain and trouble this caused the agency and the United States, didn’t end up extracting a single piece of valuable information not readily available by…

So Chuck Hagel has been fired as defense secretary. We were critical of his appointment, and opposed his confirmation by the Senate. But let's be clear: Hagel has done what he was asked and what was expected of him at the Pentagon. To the degree he has deviated from the Obama White House line, he's…

The deadline for the Joint Plan of Action ended it seems without a final agreement between the P5+1 and Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. It’s not yet clear what happens next.

The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol, featuring Brit Hume:

In their final push to enact Obamacare, Nancy Pelosi urged her fellow Democrats to “pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” They probably should have found out first. Now they need the Supreme Court to “find” once again in their favor.

Vice President Joe Biden just returned Sunday from a three-nation trip that concluded with a 48 hour visit to Turkey. The vice president, his wife, and his entourage arrived in Turkey via Ukraine Friday evening around 7:30 local time for meetings with President Erdogan and other government…

'Hey, Krusty!” says Bart, surprising his childhood idol while the clown is opening an animal shelter for animals put out of work by Cirque du Soleil. “Wha .  .  . have you been going to Temple?!” a bewildered Krusty the Clown asks Bart, wondering why this far-from-pious boy is suddenly sporting a…

Berlin

It's not clear when (or whether) the Obama White House will conclude a final agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. The extended deadline for the interim deal known as the Joint Plan of Action is set to expire November 24. And the president very much wants a deal that would cement his…

You want to like Interstellar. Why wouldn’t you? It’s a big, juicy, fancy, ambitious, emotional epic about the future of humankind. It has a killer lead performance by Matthew McConaughey. And for conservatives, the movie is full of surprising “Easter eggs” suggesting (as the blockbuster Batman…

Move over, Barack Obama. The Republicans are now the party of hope—at least when it comes to Obama’s expected executive order on immigration.

Republican representative Mike Coffman of Colorado was the No. 1 target for defeat by House Democrats in 2014. Making matters worse, he had been gerrymandered out of his solidly Republican district and was opposed by the most impressive candidate Democrats could recruit. His future as a congressman…

After Barack Obama’s reelection, the Republicans went through the familiar soul-searching motions. If they had only been true to their conservative principles, they would have won the argument, and thus the election. Or maybe if they had moderated here and there, they would have swayed more…

One month short of his 78th birthday, and 27 years after his self-immolation, Gary Hart has been given a present of sorts by writer Matt Bai, who in All the Truth Is Out recasts the past as Hart wants to see it, a great man brought low by a change (for the worse) in the national zeitgeist that…

The Weekly Standard has a full-time position available for an editorial assistant. Duties will include fact-checking, research, and proofreading.

Let us now praise famous men, or at least one good federal judge, as some recent work of his demonstrates. Jeffrey Sutton is this judge, and he sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which includes the states of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Earlier this month he…

Ever since the Democrats were trounced in the midterm elections, they and the media have been trying to figure out how Republicans triumphed so thoroughly. Wasn’t the GOP supposed to be in permanent decline, on the wrong side of history, demography, and the issues? So far the soul searching has…

The Scrapbook, ever mindful of the passage of time, couldn’t help but notice the obituary for John Doar in a recent edition of the Washington Post. Doar, who died last week at the age of 92, had been one of Bobby Kennedy’s associates at the Justice Department, serving for seven years in its civil…

The late William F. Buckley famously observed that he “would sooner be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand members of the faculty of Harvard.” Not only does this remain a sage observation, The Scrapbook would suggest extending…

For years the “Innocence Project” at Northwestern University’s -Medill School of Journalism was “the most celebrated university program in America,” as the Chicago Reader put it. It’s also one of the most emulated, spawning imitators at law and journalism schools from Maine to Maui. And who could…

Willow Run Airport, Mich.

In 2012, The Columnist, a play based on the life of Joseph Alsop, opened on Broadway. In their reviews, critics felt compelled to explain to readers who the main character was. One described him as “a once-feared political pundit,” another as “the most powerful journalist that everyone’s…

Saturday Night Live mocked President Obama's executive amnesty -- and that it changed how a bill becomes a law in Washington, D.C.

The news broke hard in my house this morning that Marion Barry, Washington D.C.’s former Mayor for Life, was dead at the age of 78. Of the profile subjects featured in my 2010 collection, Fly Fishing With Darth Vader, he’s the third I’ve had to eulogize in the last few years. (The other two being…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the November 17 issue's Book & Arts section.

President Obama said on ABC News that Americans will want that "new car smell" in their next president:

The Washington Post reports that Marion Barry has died:

Some 140 million bargain-hunting customers will descend on retailers on Thanksgiving Day, so-called Black Friday, and throughout next weekend -- or at least those who haven’t shopped already or by early next week will head for the shops. Not so long ago most stores remained closed  on Thanksgiving…

The White House pool report notes President Obama is golfing with Derek Jeter and that the White House condemns today's terror attack in Kenya:

A handful of Senate Democrats are publicly expressing disapproval of the president's executive action on immigration, but it's not yet clear that any of them are willing to do anything to stop him. 

Under the nation’s biofuels policy known as the Renewable Fuel Standard, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is supposed to set an amount of biofuels—ethanol, biodiesel, and low carbon advanced biofuels—which are to be blended into the nation’s fuel supply. That amount is to be finalized by…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on President Obama's newly announced executive actions on immigration policy and amnesty.

In a 2011 blog post titled "There's a New Sheriff in Town," the White House announced that Vice President Joe Biden was spearheading a new "effort to root out wasteful spending at every agency and department in the Federal Government" called the Campaign to Cut Waste. As if to emphasize the urgency…

The pro-Hillary Clinton group Correct the Record has released this tribute video encouraging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016:

Ahead of the grand jury in Ferguson announcing whether it will indict a police officer for killing a man in Ferguson, Missouri, Attorney General Eric Holder has released a video announcement telling law enforcement to behave. 

Hillary Clinton has made several trips to San Francisco in the past year, with all of them costing the city's police department more than $21,000 in extra expenses—including more than $10,000 for a single event with Nancy Pelosi.

George Washington, 1796:

The U.S. State Department recently awarded a contract worth $541,250 to a foreign research firm to conduct public opinion surveys as part of an "Arab omnibus study" in at least eight foreign countries beginning this month. Significant portions of the justification documents were redacted, including…

Ed Gillespie, writing in the New York Times:

Former White House spokesman Jay Carney admitted on CNN that President Obama has indeed flip-flopped on executive amnesty--and that the actions he's taking now are ones he previously called unconstitutional. Here's video:

Sean Hannity reported tonight that Ferguson, Missouri is "already in an uproar":

A group of immigration activists gathered outside the White House after President Obama's speech tonight. CNN played a clip of the activists' celebrating:

Senator Jeff Sessions says he’s not convinced his fellow Republicans have a plan to successfully combat President Obama’s newly announced executive orders on immigration. 

Hillary Clinton tweeted her thanks to President Obama "for taking action on immigration."

Senator Jeff Sessions responds to President Obama's executive amnesty speech:

President Obama’s immigration speech, as prepared for delivery:

Director of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson will head for the Texas-Mexico border town of McAllen, Texas Friday in the wake of President Obama's announcement regarding his immigration executive order. Johnson will be meeting with DHS employees for "workforce engagements," presumably to discuss and/or…

A Capitol Hill source emails to say that "The National Immigrant Youth Alliance has posted what appears to be an embargoed copy of the White House summary of Obama’s illegal executive action."

House speaker John Boehner released a brief YouTube message ahead of President Obama's Thursday night address on his executive action on immigration.

The Republican National Committee responds to President Obama's executive amnesty with this video:

Texas senator Ted Cruz took to the Senate floor to speak out against President Obama's executive amnesty. He did so today by quoting at length from Cicero:

Alex Wayne at Bloomberg reports that:

Latest evidence of demoralization and frustration comes in the form of a Wall Street Journal poll that shows 56 percent of Americans responded with a “yes” to the question:

John Walters and David Murray, writing for Hudson Institute:

Europe is experiencing increased, and threatening, intrusions by Russian aircraft and:

The bloom must surely be fading when, as Hadas Gold of Politico reports:

White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri defended President Obama's planned executive amnesty by saying it "doesn't" shred the Constitution:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Adam J. White on whether the Halbig challenge can kill Obamacare.

Former Virginia senator Jim Webb announced last night the formation of a presidential exploratory committee. Webb, a contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, made the announcement in a lengthy YouTube video posted on his website:

Former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi picked Billy Joel over President Barack Obama. 

The United State Senate voted down the Save Mary Landrieu Act of 2014 by one vote last night.  Senator Landrieu had hoped to persuade her constituents in Louisiana that she could bring home the pork owing to her seniority and her savvy in the ways of Washington.  She would get a pipeline bill…

Senator Jeff Sessions calls Barack Obama an "Emperor of the United States" now that the president is going ahead with executive amnesty.

Congressional Republicans’ internal debate over how to respond to President Obama’s impending lawless executive amnesty is being characterized as a battle between “immigration hawks” and those who want “to show Republicans can govern.”  But that description is inapt, and it does a disservice to the…

A new poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal shows "nearly half" of Americans oppose President Obama's forthcoming executive action on immigration, and only a plurality of Latinos support the measure. The poll found 48 percent of Americans oppose the executive action, the details of which…

On Thursday, English voters in the constituency of Rochester and Strood, in the country of Kent south-east of London, are likely to return Mark Reckless to Parliament as the UK Independence Party’s (UKIP) second MP. When Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron promised a month ago to throw…

Tomorrow night, at 8 p.m. EST, President Obama will address the nation on his coming executive amnesty.

No secret that the Republicans did well in the recent elections.  Though pace Josh Earnest, not all that many people voted.  Still … it has to be disturbing to him and his boss that, as David Wasserman of 538 reports:

Even as word is leaking out that President Obama will announce his long-awaited executive action on immigration this week, House Speaker John Boehner has posted a summary of previous presidential statements admitting the limits of executive power. Boehner's communications advisor Matt Wolking…

The Washington Post reports that President Obama will announce his executive order on immigration Thursday, with an accompanying rally in Las Vegas taking place Friday. Here's more from the Post:

The headline over this Government Executive article reads:

John Harwood of CNBC and the New York Times reports that President Obama's executive amnesty order is coming Friday in Las Vegas:

Contradicting reports that Secretary of State John Kerry has delayed a trip to Vienna to join the nuclear talks with Iran, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki tweeted Wednesday that the State Department "never set a specific day" for Kerry to be in Vienna. 

An ex-Guantanamo detainee based in northern Pakistan is leading an effort to recruit jihadists for the Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that controls large portions of Iraq and Syria.

Harry Reid, who is finishing up his term as Senate majority leader, has some words of advice for President Obama: "go big" on executive amnesty.

Republicans on Capitol Hill remain unsure of how to proceed should President Obama issue his expected executive order on immigration.

Last week, yet another damaging video emerged of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber talking about Obamacare's "Cadillac tax." The health care law assesses a hefty 40 percent tax on costly, so-called "Cadillac" insurance plans exceeding $10,200 for an individual and $27,500 for a family. However,…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Lee Smith on the Jerusalem Synagogue attack.

The Wall Street Journal reports that:

Secretary of State John Kerry called today's terror attack in Jerusalem the "pure result of incitement" and called on "Palestinian leadership at every single level to condemn this in the most powerful terms." Here's video:

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, a possible 2016 Republican presidential candidate, will soon release this statement responding to the terror attack in Jerusalem.

After a Palestinian terror attack that killed four in Israel, President Barack Obama is calling for both sides to be calm. "Too many Israelis have died; too many Palestinians have died. At this difficult time I think it's important for both Palestinians and Israelis to try to work together to lower…

Jonathan Turley, a liberal law professor and attorney, announced on his blog Tuesday he will be representing the House of Representatives in its lawsuit against the Obama administration. Here's Turley:

With three weeks to go in college football’s regular season, Alabama has vaulted to #1 in the Anderson & Hester Computer Rankings.  The 1-loss Crimson Tide, which beat previously undefeated Mississippi State on Saturday to move up from #3, edged undefeated Florida State in this week’s rankings…

Negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program drag on as ponderously as the last two minutes of an NBA playoff game.  And now, as Sangwon Yoon of Bloomberg reports:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the 2007 brainchild of now-Senator Elizabeth Warren, was formed in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank Act. An annual audit by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for the year ending September 30, 2014 found that the fledgling agency is continuing…

CNN got today's Jerusalem terror attack wrong: It happened in a synagogue, not a mosque, as the chyron indicated earlier this morning.

Democratic Rep. Peter Welch, a lawmaker and a lawyer, couldn't explain a legal justification for part of President Obama's executive amnesty order, when pressed about it last night on MNSBC:

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called for the formation of a Benghazi select committee in the Senate. He made the comments on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, according to a partial transcript of the show provided by a producer.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer John McCormack on what Jonathan Gruber got wrong.

How to explain America’s failure, after 20 years of efforts, to impose genuinely crippling sanctions on Iran? Start with the penchant of the executive branch—from Presidents Clinton to Obama—for excluding Congress from the process.

Open enrollment for health insurance plans under Obamacare is currently underway, and some of the biggest celebrities in Hollywood and elsewhere are out there promoting it on Twitter. Furthermore, it appears there could be some coordination with the White House, with top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett…

At the American Enterprise Institute, Amir Toumaj writes on the Iranian government's "Economy of Resistance" and the internal disagreement in Tehran over how to best implement it. Toumaj explains how relaxing economic sanctions would give President Hassan Rouhani the ability to protect the country…

With Jonathan Gruber … whoever he is and if that really is his name.  Never heard of him.  Never met him.  Just some guy who came around looking for consulting gigs.  And as for running a scam on a the not-too-bright electorate:  

As Saudi Arabia undergoes its slow process of change, the matter of women and motor vehicles remains crucial. On October 24, Saudi women were summoned by a social media campaign to take to the roads in cars they own, typically, but do not drive.

Meghan Hoyer and Tom Vanden Brook of USA Today report that:

Lucy McCalmont at Politico writes that "Support for Obamacare continues to decline, with the law hitting a new low in approval, and a new high in disapproval, as the second enrollment period has opened for Americans, according to Gallup.

On the heels of an Associated Press report over the weekend that the State Department's unclassified email system was taken offline due to a suspected hacking attack, the main State.gov website is down Monday morning. Multiple attempts to access the site have failed, and the…

MSNBC's Morning Joe discussed "The Truth About Interrogation" by Stephen F. Hayes on this morning's show:

New and returning customers to Healthcare.gov this year will have one less option if they run into difficulties. In the run-up to the initial launch in 2013, the Obamacare website promoted a "live chat" feature in addition to the toll-free phone number to be available 24/7 to answer questions:

Of all the rituals I count on to give my life shape, there is none so sacred as witnessing my former brother-in-law, Mike Benton, stand for local office in our pleasant burg of Calvert County, Maryland. Though my wife’s sister wound down with Mike two decades ago, he and I have a…

Our colleague Jonathan V. Last has assembled an all-star cast of contributors for his dazzling new collection, The Seven Deadly Virtues: 18 Conservative Writers on Why the Virtuous Life is Funny as Hell. Among them are many who will be familiar to you—Andrew Ferguson, Matt Labash, P. J. O’Rourke,…

Back before incoming senators Tom Cotton and Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst and Dan Sullivan were born, before new House members Elise Stefanik and Lee Zeldin and Mia Love were a gleam in their parents’ eyes, the Beach Boys said it best: “Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world.”

Tuesday’s elections reinforced constitutional checks and balances against the Obama administration’s excesses, but not just in the most obvious way. For all the attention rightly paid to the new Senate majority, there’s another important set of newly elected officials who may soon push back against…

There are many reasons to celebrate the thumping Democrats took in the midterm elections, but near the top of the list is the fact that the phony “war on women” has become a losing ploy for Democrats. With a lot of help from the media, Democrats in 2012 managed to tar every Republican candidate in…

Air conditioning is a hot topic in the nation’s capital. An article in the September 16 Washington Post announced, “The Obama administration is preparing to introduce major steps to phase out production of a popular chemical coolant [R134-a] used in refrigerators and air conditioners, citing…

CNN morning host Alisyn Camerota wanted to know: Where had Chris Christie been the night before, when it became clear Republicans would take control of the Senate? The New Jersey governor’s voice was hoarse, his eyes drooping. “I was in 19 states in the last five days,” Christie replied, cracking a…

Last month, Benjamin Millpied’s contemporary dance collective, the L.A. Dance Project, had its New York debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gillman Opera House. What Millepied has accomplished in two years with LADP is extraordinary: He’s assembled private donors to fund the company,…

With Republicans in control of the Senate for the first time since Barack Obama took office, the president may find it harder to appoint left-wing lawyers to judgeships. Whether he compromises on some of his nominees, including any to the Supreme Court, may depend on the willingness of the new…

With the Republicans winning control of the Senate last week, The Scrapbook is hopeful that the country might be protected from the Obama administration’s worst foreign policy instincts, especially regarding Iran. At the end of this month, the interim agreement with Tehran over its nuclear program…

The HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, featuring the Oscar-winning actress Frances McDormand delivering what may be one of the greatest performances ever recorded, is nothing short of a masterpiece. We have come to expect work at this level from HBO, but it’s still interesting to contemplate the…

From time to time there comes a moment when a president is expected to say something meaningful about an event that has just occurred. President Obama faced such a moment last week after Republicans swept the midterm elections and captured the Senate. He had nothing interesting, much less…

You never know where discord might emerge in political Washington, but even The Scrapbook was surprised​—​and disheartened, really​—​to learn about the bruised feelings at the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee of the U.S. Postal Service.

Kabul

In 1853 Czar Nicholas I, in a conversation with the British ambassador, reportedly coined the phrase “sick man of Europe” to describe the decaying Ottoman Empire. The corrupt and debt-ridden Ottomans soon dragged England, France, and Russia into conflict in Crimea, just as the czar had feared. The…

Scott Walker has won every round of his long fight with Big Labor in Wisconsin, but it wasn’t until November 4 that he delivered the knockout punch. In his third gubernatorial election in four years, Walker defeated Democratic challenger Mary Burke by 6 points. It was the same margin of victory he…

Two well-placed sources on Capitol Hill say that the Congressional Budget Office effectively used Jonathan Gruber’s model to score Obamacare.  That model favors government mandates over market competition and claims that essentially the only way to achieve a large reduction in the number of…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Matt Labash reading his essay "They Like Mike."

President Obama appeared to criticize Australian prime minister Tony Abbott for closing borders to Austrlia due to concern over Ebola.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the November 10th issue's Books and Arts section.

There is more than might have been, but a lot less than first meets the eye. That describes the climate deal struck this week by President Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping in their private two-day meeting following a gathering of 19 Asian Pacific leaders in Beijing. The very fact of a…

Yesterday Senate Republicans, led by Lindsey Graham and Bob Corker, tried to force a vote on the Iran Nuclear Negotiations Act of 2014, which would re-impose sanctions on Iran waived during the negotiating process if the P5+1 fail to sign a deal by the November 24 deadline.

Exit polls from last week’s midterm elections challenged the conventional “it’s the economy, stupid” wisdom, as the number of voters who said the economy was the most important issue fell to just four in 10. The dark horse issue of the 2014 election was foreign policy.

The nation’s nuclear arsenal has been neglected, says Defense Secretary Hagel, in a time of conventional warfare. Now, it is time to do some overhaul and repair and bring the big bombs, and their delivery systems, back up to scratch.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Steve Hayes on Jonathan Gruber's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

President Obama held a townhall today in Burma where he was met with signs that read "Reform is fake" and "Change." He commented on the signs before getting on with the program.

Senator Jeff Sessions wants Congress to stop the "president's unlawful executive amnesty." And he believes that's precisely why "Voters sent Congress a Republican majority."

Matthew Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon, offers Congress a path for fighting against President Obama's plans to amnesty millions of illegal immigrants through executive order:

ABC obtains private emails written by a possible Hillary Clinton campaign manager:

What follows is the document written by Jason Beale -- a pseudonym for a longtime U.S. military and intelligence interrogator with extensive knowledge of the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA on some high-value detainees. Those techniques are scrutinized in a forthcoming report…

Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News tonight that amnesty via executive order is an "impeachable offense."

Senate majority leader Harry Reid wants President Obama to hold off on his planned immigration executive order.

The White House is incensed, mad enough to spit, and angry as a mashed cat at Jonathan Gruber for saying that the Affordable Care Act had to be sold to the “stupid” electorate by deceptive means.  It seems that once the bill was passed and signed into law Mr. Gruber couldn’t stop talking about how…

Recent news on the economy has been generally encouraging so it is possible that this week’s first time claims number could be a one-off.  As Shobhana Chandra of Bloomberg reports,

They lost the election but never mind.  As Mike Lillis of The Hill reports:

Does this week’s battle between Mississippi State and Alabama involve the nation’s #1 and #3 teams, or #1 and #5?  Well, it depends whether you ask the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee or the Anderson & Hester Computer Rankings.  Pretty much across the board, the former has a…

At a press conference today, Nancy Pelosi denied that she even knows Jonathan Gruber, the M.I.T. professor often known as the "architect" or "author" of Obamacare whose comments about the law have created a lot of controversy this week.  

In the "Great Hall of the People" in Beijing, China, President Obama appeared with China's current president Xi Jinping at a joint press conference Wednesday. During his remarks as he noted the 35th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China, President Obama recalled a saying of…

House speaker John Boehner told President Obama at a White House meeting last Friday to give the House "one more chance" to pass a bill on immigration. Boehner referenced this conversation at the House Republican conference meeting Thursday morning, according to sources in the room.

As Republican euphoria over the November 4 election begins to subside and more practical considerations emerge, a looming question is whether the various factions within the Republican party will be able to work together.  One recent but little-noted change in Senate leadership may have increased…

State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki’s sparring with reporters the last week suggests that the White House is either confused, or intentionally confusing the public, about the importance of the IAEA’s current round of inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities.

Following the 2014 elections, Congressman John Kline remains the major and senior elected figure in the Minnesota Republican party. The powerful chairman of the House education committee, he will be a central figure in the reform measures ahead to improve the nation’s faltering public school…

Brutal news for Democrats in the latest Gallup survey:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with the 2017 Project's Jeffrey H. Anderson on the Obamacare lies.

Adam Kredo reports for the Washington Free Beacon:

Republican Dan Sullivan of Alaska has defeated incumbent Democrat Mark Begich in one of the country's last outstanding Senate races. According to the New York Times, Sullivan has a nearly 8,000-vote lead, winning 49 percent of the vote to Begich's 46 percent.

Watch Christina Hoff Sommers puncture the balloon of some seeking to enlist the police to root out “street harassment.”

The search for the meaning of last week’s election returns has yielded many theories to account for why people voted for the party out of power and against incumbents.  Sure is a mystery, there.  What could possibly be behind such random voter behavior?  There must be clues, somewhere, carved into…

As reported in Government Executive, in a new study:

Late last night, the White House announced a carbon deal with China. As the Washington Post explains:

The latest edition of Conversations With Bill Kristol, featuring Spence Abraham and Jay Cost:

The most widely quoted professor of the recent news cycle, Professor Jonathan Gruber of MIT now says:

Who would have thought that that Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, and Zac Brown, accomplished musicians all, would be so, well, tone-deaf? But how else to explain their choice of song—Creedence Clearwater's famously anti-war anthem “Fortunate Son”—at the ostensibly pro-military “Concert for Valor”…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the best and worst policies for the new Congressional GOP leadership.

Urban Outfitters is selling a "Hillary Clinton Nutcracker." It's listed on the store's website for $60:

The FT reports that:

Vice President Joe Biden misstated the number of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan by 47,000 at a Veterans Day event today at Arlington National Cemetary. Here's audio of his remarks:

Paul Miller, writing in the New York Observer:

Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Ayatollah Seyed Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi has been imprisoned in his native land since 2006. In a statement on November 7, he announced a hunger strike from his cell in Tehran’s Evin House of Detention, notorious for the political and spiritual dissidents held and abused there.

President Obama told the president of China he wants to "take the relationship to a new level."

Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona is pushing his Republican colleagues to try to block the president from using executive action on immigration, but his plan is likely to hit strong resistance from House leaders.

As the Democratic party’s hopes ended about five minutes after the polls had closed, with the networks calling Kentucky for Mitch McConnell, so went the Chicago Bears' fortunes, Sunday night, on the Green Bay Packer’s first possession.  The Bears went down about as ignominiously, and quickly, as…

Jonathan Gruber, a key architect of Obamacare (and also of Romneycare), has been caught on camera by the Daily Signal offering up insights on the “stupidity of the American voter” and on the importance of using a noble lie (or lies) in passing Obamacare. 

After the 2012 presidential election, Republican donors were left scratching their heads, thinking: how could we spend all that money and fall so short?

President Obama, earlier today, released this statement on net neutrality:

Vice President Joe Biden loves Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But he doesn't "agree with a damn thing you say," the vice president once told Netanyahu, whose nickname is Bibi.

The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol, featuring Joe Lieberman:

President Obama put on a purple silk robe, matching the one worn by the Chinese president, to watch a fireworks display for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation he's attending in China.

President Obama, an increasingly leaky White House tells us, fears irrelevance. I am still relevant, the president all-but declared at his recent press conference. And to prove it, he told us about his constitutional authority to issue executive orders and to veto bills that he finds in conflict…

Two years after it was supposed to help revitalize Atlantic City, the $2.4 billion Revel casino—all 57 stories of it—is closed. It’s an expensive eyesore that sums up Atlantic City’s decline.

The fighting in Burma would be the longest campaign of World War II, under conditions so bad that the Japanese called the place jigoku—hell. Soldiers hiked across hot, dry plains one day and slogged through mud under pelting rain the next. They fought off blackflies, mosquitoes, ticks, and leeches,…

Last winter, my father gave me an American flag he had been keeping in his closet. It had been moved there several decades before from his mother’s closet, where it had rested for more than 30 years. It seems I was the first person to unfold the 48-star-spangled banner since it had covered the…

I first visited Estonia—or more specifically, its capital, Tallinn—in August 1993, two years after the small Baltic state regained its independence after nearly half-a-century of Soviet occupation. Tallinn was in the process of uneasy, edgy transformation. The Soviet past was not yet cleanly past.…

The Scrapbook’s eyes fell recently on a piece in the Atlantic by Derek Thompson, which quantifies what The Scrapbook has sensed for some time. Drawing on the work of Jed Kolko, chief economist for Trulia, the real estate website, and UCLA’s Matthew Kahn, it draws a clear connection between…

Last week, the Obama White House finally clarified its Middle East policy. It’s détente with Iran and a cold war with Israel.

Fifty years ago, almost to the day, a group of students at the University of California, Berkeley, demanded that school administrators recognize their right to freedom of speech and allow political activity on campus. Students swarmed a police car holding a comrade, Joan Baez sang “We Shall…

It turns out Elizabeth Warren, favorite senator of the left, is not only a self-described Cherokee without evidence of Cherokee ancestry, but a self-described consumer -finance expert without evidence of any financial savvy. Joining two of her favorite themes, women’s oppression and the cruel…

"An nvitation to [Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn’s] historic Georgetown home was one of the most coveted status symbols in the nation’s capital, an entry to an elite salon of the powerful, talented .  .  . ” (Washington Post, October 29).

A recent Time magazine cover story has touched off quite a controversy. More than 70,000 people signed an online petition decrying the magazine’s affront. The offending article is headlined “Rotten Apples: It’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. Some tech millionaires may have found a way to…

At the conclusion of the latest installment of the endless Arab war against Israel, the leaders of Hamas simultaneously accused Israel of “genocide” against the residents of Gaza and took to the streets, dancing, ululating, and jubilating in celebration of their “victory” over the Zionist enemy.…

On September 2, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln received a telegram from General William Tecumseh Sherman that read, “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.” This was more than a victory. It was deliverance.

Tunis 

Most of us at The Weekly Standard are baseball fans. Like all human institutions we are imperfect, so we have a few colleagues who superciliously disdain sports, and a few others who vulgarly prefer football or basketball. But we ignore the naysayers and carpers in our midst. We’re proud to endorse…

Given the time and money that went into the recent elections, it seems there ought to be a final word. A summing up. A few words to put a period on the whole business. Something, somewhere. From somebody. There was plenty of analysis – not quite “instant,” but close enough. The television people…

President Obama and Vice President Biden might not see eye-to-eye on immigration strategy. A hint of an apparent disagreement was on display during Obama's lunch with congressional leaders on Friday at the White House.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the November 3rd issue's Books and Arts section.

Last week, Sinai-based extremists targeted the North Sinai security headquarters with a massive blast, causing damage, but no injuries. Thankfully it wasn’t a replay of the attack last month that killed 33 security personnel in some of Egypt’s worst violence since the overthrow of former president,…

The White House forwards this statement from the Pentagon press secretary on sending 1,500 more troops to Iraq:

A Republican aide says the House of Representatives will continue to move forward on passing a long-term omnibus spending bill in the upcoming lame duck session of Congress. While some conservatives in both the House and Senate have suggested the House pass a short-term continuing resoution to fund…

As 2015 open enrollment for Obamacare nears, Healthcare.gov has been telling consumers that "plans and estimated prices for 2015 coverage will be available in early November." Although signup is not possible until November 15, the website promises this "window shopping" experience will come sooner:

The Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee published an important scoop yesterday. President Obama “secretly wrote to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the middle of last month and described a shared interest in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.” The…

Ed Gillespie will not be the next senator from Virginia. "Republican Ed Gillespie concedes Virginia Senate race to Democratic Sen. Mark Warner," reports the AP.

The Democratic party's drubbing in Tuesday's election was good for Hillary Clinton's presidential chances. At least that's the line being fed by the New York Times.

Matthew Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon, suggests Hillary Clinton was the 2014 midterm elections' biggest loser:

The monthly BLS report on unemployment comes in under expectations which were for some 235,000 news jobs.  So the 214,000 is a downside miss.  However, the new benchmark for “good, not great” seems to be a monthly increase in of 200,000.  And the economy has hit that number for nine consecutive…

The shaky cease-fire in Ukraine may be falling completely apart.  Reuters is reporting that:

Nancy Pelosi is staying right where she is -- minority leader of the House of Representatives. And she emailed supporters last night to let them know she wasn't "going anywhere."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes and why President Obama's rambling post-election press conference reveals that he has no idea what just happened.

Adam Kredo reports:

The American presence is ending but the war in Afghanistan continues with the Afghan government’s forces taking casualties that “cannot be sustained, according to a top officer within the international coalition.”

It is often claimed that conservative religious voters, especially white evangelicals, are going the way of the dinosaur, consigned to demographic irrelevance. But they were a key component of the Republicans’ 2014 midterm victories. According to exit polls, Conservative religious voters made up as…

The way out of the Great Depression was neither smooth nor continuous.  In 1937, the Fed tightened and the economy went back into recession.  There is fear, in some quarters, that the Fed may again be putting on the brakes a bit prematurely.

The warmongers are at it again. In case you haven’t heard, the Pentagon has declared a global war on global warming. It’s our armed forces vs. the forces of nature, and we are the enemy. Those entrusted with protecting us from suicide bombers are now trying to protect the environment from us.

When President Obama finally offers his executive action on illegal immigration, the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is going to get a bit busier.

Lorraine Woellert of Bloomberg reports:

From the Washington Post this morning:

During the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, the U.S. military used a new generation of technological weapons that left the rest of the world far behind. But according the Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for acquisitions, technology, and logistics, that advantage is…

There is "no one" on the Democratic bench to step up if Hillary Clinton does not run for president, claims for Bill Clinton adviser Paul Begala. He made the comments last night on CNN:

President Obama has always wanted to be a historic president.  In an election that was driven by Obamacare, he took another big step toward that end on Tuesday — just not in the way he intended.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Steve Israel is stepping down.

David Adesnik, writing for the Foreign Policy Initiative:

President Obama labeled the U.S. government "the most important organization on earth" and said that he'd "squeeze every last little bit of opportunity" from his position as president of the United State over the next two years. Watch here:

President Obama said he'd "enjoy having some Kentucky bourbon with Mitch McConnell:"

There were a lot of surprises in the election.  Not least that the polls missed the magnitude many Republican victories.  Races that were supposed to be toss-ups, too-close-to-call, within the margin of error, and so forth turned out to be cakewalks for the Republicans.

A few thoughts about last night's stunning results for the GOP, in no particular order.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the results of the 2014 elections.

The Connecticut gubernatorial race is too close to call officially, but Democrat Governor Dan Malloy has declared victory.

Vice President Joe Biden seemed to take a shot at the Clintons in an interview yesterday when he brought up "all that stuff that was going on" in the 1990s. Biden's reference served as a reminder that Democrats avoided the Democratic president when President Clinton was getting impeached.

Even before President Obama declared that all his "policies are on the ballot" in Tuesday's midterm elections, he told Chuck Todd in September's Meet the Press appearance that "if democrats hold the Senate," Republicans should get the message that "their strategy of just obstructing and saying…

While the nation was focused on the mid-term elections Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies regarding U.S.-China relations. As he often does, Kerry brought up the subject of climate change, which he asserted is happening "faster…

Senator Jeff Sessions, who run reelection last night in an uncontested race, says last night's Republican victory is a "mandate" to block President Obama's planned executive amnesty. 

In a live interview late last night on CNN, Texas senator Ted Cruz refused to commit to supporting Mitch McConnell for majority leader in the Senate.

President Obama will face the press: He'll host a press conference later today, following his party's terrible election yesterday.

Republicans won 7 Democratic seats (so far!), lost none, and took control of the Senate. Harry Reid is history. Democrats thought for sure they’d add some governorships. Nope. They won one but lost 4, including the governor’s race in the bluest of blue states, Maryland. In the House, they lost at…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the results of the 2014 elections.

How sweeping was the Republican wave of 2014? Yes, the GOP has held the House of Representatives (with gains) and taken control of the Senate. But the party is also likely to come out ahead for the year in governor’s races—something few thought possible at the beginning of the cycle. And here’s a…

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Republican Elise Stefanik has taken over a Democratic House seat in upstate New York. Stefanik, age 30, will become the youngest woman to ever serve in the House. She won by a whopping 22 points. Democrats narrowly won this seat in 2009, 2010, 2012 when the…

Fox News projects Republican Charlie Baker will win the Massachusetts governorship, defeating Democrat Martha Coakley in an upset.

Larry Hogan, a Republican businessman, has won his race for governor in Maryland against Democratic lieutenant governor Anthony Brown. The Associated Press projects:

It's been one of the evening's closest races, but Republican Charlie Baker is projected to be the next Governor of Massachussetts by both Fox News and ABC. The Democratic candidate Martha Coakley, who acquired the nickname "Chokely" after she lost to Scott Brown in the 2010 Massachussetts special…

Despite tonight's election results, President Obama "doesn’t feel repudiated." At least, that's what a nameless aide is telling the New York Times.

Republican Thom Tillis is projected to win his close race for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina, beating incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan. The Associated Press reports:

Joni Ernst, a Republican state senator, has won her race for the U.S. Senate in Iowa against three-term Democratic congressman Bruce Braley, Fox News projects.

Republican Bruce Rauner has defeated sitting Democratic governor Pat Quinn in Illinois, NBC News projects.

With less than one-third of precincts reporting, ABC News and Fox News project that incumbent Republican governor Scott Walker has defeated Democratic challenger Mary Burke. While most of the polls showed a tight race (except for the Marquette poll that showed Walker winning by 7 points), Walker…

Republican David Perdue has won his race for the U.S. Senate in Georgia against Democrat Michelle Nunn, CNN projects. Perdue is expected to win more than 50 percent of the vote, meaning the race will not have to proceed to a runoff.

CBS projects Pat Roberts will hold his Senate seat in Kansas. "PROJECTION: Republican incumbent Pat Roberts is re-elected in the Kansas Senate race," CBS tweets.

Charlie Crist has lost his race for governor in Florida, falling short to Republican incumbent Rick Scott, the Associated Press projects.

Republican Cory Gardner is projected to beat incumbent Democrat Mark Udall in Colorado's U.S. Senate race.

Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican Bill Cassidy will continue their race for the U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana in a December runoff, NBC News projects. Cassidy, a congressman from Baton Rouge, leads the incumbent Landrieu, but neither candidate will earn 50 percent of the vote. Under Louisiana's…

Ben Sasse is projected to be the next Senator from Nebraska. This does not come as a surprise, as he appears to have won handily. However, THE WEEKLY STANDARD published the first major political profile of Sasse last summer, when he was a virtual unknown in the state.

Barbara Comstock of Virginia has won her race for the U.S. House, beating Democrat John Foust.

President Obama is inviting "bipartisan, bicameral congressional leaders," an unnamed White House official tells the pool reporter. 

Republicans have now picked up a third Senate seat. This one is in South Dakota. 

Jeanne Shaheen, the incumbent Democratic senator from New Hampshire, has won her race against Republican Scott Brown, ABC News projects.

Republican Tom Cotton has beaten incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor in Arkansas's U.S. Senate race, Fox News projects.

Shelley Moore Capito is projected to win the Senate race in West Virginia. This marks the first Republican Senate pick-up of the 2014 election.

Despite the quick victory, it's obviously too early to tell whether this is a good omen for Mitch McConnell's chances of becoming Senate Majority Leader. Looking at the map, a few key things jump out. It looks like McConnell overperformed in coal country compared to his 2008 victory in the state,…

South Carolina has elected the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction, with Republican Tim Scott winning his race to complete a term to the Senate after having been appointed to the seat in 2013. Scott is the first African American popularly elected to the Senate in the old…

Republican Mitch McConnell has won reelection to the Senate in Kentucky, besting Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes. The Associated Press projects:

Someone guileless drone from the White House—who “asked not to be named so he could speak freely argued Democrats still have a chance to hold the Senate”—wants the world to think of Democratic candidates distancing themselves from the president as cowards.  

We have heard a lot about gridlock in Washington and the damage that it does.  The public, we are told, wants the people they elect and send there to “get something done.” And we will, no doubt, be hearing a lot more of the same thing no matter how the elections today turn out.  Big Republican win…

Last winter President Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development published a regulation pursuant to the Fair Housing Act that defines discrimination as actions or policies that while neutral and nondiscriminatory in their intent have a disparate impact, shown through statistics, on a group…

We'll have real votes to talk about soon enough, but here's a final look at where the polls ended up in the 2014 Senate races.

Vice President Joe Biden blew Kansas independent Greg Orman's cover in a radio interview today. Orman hasn't stated which party he'll caucus with in the Senate--actively avoiding announcing whether he'll be with Republicans or Democrats--but Biden stated definitively that Orman "will be with us" if…

The Virginia Republican party says there are problems with some touchscreen voting machines in Virginia Beach and other communities. The party sent out a video of one voter attempting to vote for Republican House member Scott Rigell. As the voter's finger touches Rigell's box, the vote is…

The scheduled date for an American pullout in Afghanistan grows closer and so do worries that it may be premature; that the troops we have trained and will be leaving behind to carry on may not be ready, quite yet, to handle the job. As Gopal Ratnam of the FP reports:

North Carolina senator Kay Hagan has a minute-long radio ad running Tuesday featuring her fellow Democrat, President Barack Obama.

Election Day has just begun, but MSNBC is already saying it's a "fact" that minority voters are being disenfranchised in Texas:

This election is "most pivotal," Fred Barnes writes in the Wall Street Journal.

The Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons (BOP) recently committed $830,160 to purchase Protective Stab Vests for use by employees in federal prison facilities. The contract was awarded on a sole-source, no-bid basis because the need was determined to be of an "urgent and compelling nature."…

Anti-Obamacare ads are dominating the airwaves in the election’s stretch run.  According to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, Republicans ran nearly 13,000 anti-Obamacare ads in Senate races during the week of October 20-26.  That’s after they ran nearly 12,000 anti-Obamacare ads during…

The state of North Carolina is investigating a potential conflict of interest involving Democratic senator Kay Hagan. Fox 46 in Charlotte reports:

President Obama will be busy tomorrow -- but he won't be actively trying to influence voters as they head to the polls on Election Day. Instead, he's got a full day of meetings at the White House.

Whether or not Jeff Bell comes from behind to win the New Jersey Senate race, he deserves credit for having run a classy, ideas-focused race. That's epitomized by his "closing argument," reproduced below. If a majority of New Jersey voters actually read this email, I do think Bell would win. The…

Early voting in North Carolina is now over, and the results are interesting. One might be tempted to compare early voting in 2014 to 2010, as both were midterms. But the latter was an easy win for Richard Burr, and this year’s battle in the Senate is shaping up to be a close race, much like 2012.

Attorney General Eric Holder is dispatching "federal election monitors" to polls tomorrow for Election Day.

Senate candidate Michelle Nunn of Georgia refused to say how she would have voted on the Affordable Care Act. While the Democrat was campaigning in Macon Monday, a local TV news reporter asked Nunn about her position on the law.

Vice Adm. Ted Branch, the director of naval intelligence, is denied access to classified material because, as David Lartner of Navy Times reports, he:

Bill Kristol, with Matthew Dowd, Donna Brazile, Cokie Roberts, and Jonathan Karl, yesterday on ABC:

How unconfident are Democrats in their own candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa? On the day before the election, the Democratic Sentorial Campaign Committee has a full-page ad on the homepage of the Des Moines Register, Iowa's largest and most influential newspaper. But there's no sign or mention of…

The New Hampshire Senate race could go either way, with Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen locked in a dead heat with Republican challenger Scott Brown. A pair of polls show both candidates with their own one-point lead, and the Real Clear Politics average of polls has Shaheen with less than a…

Quinnipiac's final poll of the Iowa Senate race finds Democrat Bruce Braley and Republican Joni Ernst tied at 47 percent. The poll shows Braley closing the gap from Quinnipiac's previous poll in late October that showed him trailing Ernst by four points, 49 percent to 45 percent.

It’s official: Dilma Rousseff is no Lula. The left-wing Brazilian president may have been reelected late last month, but she enjoys nowhere near the popularity that Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva – better known simply as “Lula” – once did. Rousseff managed to squeak by with only 51.6 percent of the vote…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the GOP's good odds of retaking the Senate.

In the eleventh hour, unaffiliated conservative candidate Joe Visconti gifted the Tom Foley campaign with a much appreciated present. Visconti announced his decision to drop out of the race on Sunday, urging his supporters to pull the lever for Foley on Tuesday. 

If you are one of the growing number of older Americans who scan the newspaper obituaries of strangers—at what age did the Grim Reaper strike, and how?—Atul Gawande’s new book is for you. But it is not for the elderly alone. This is the fourth of the Boston surgeon’s book-length discussions of…

With about a week to go until the midterm election, Republicans stand to make gains in the House and generally hold the line in governorships. The battle for the Senate has been the locus of attention for most people engaged in the campaign.

"Republicans could lose their House majority because of the shutdown,” blared the headline of a story published at the Washington Post’s Wonkblog by Princeton professor Sam Wang on October 8, 2013, midpoint of the 16-day shutdown. Two weeks after Wang pointed to surveys showing control of the House…

Frank Bruni, the restaurant critic-turned-op-ed columnist for the New York Times, traveled to Texas recently to attend the Austin City Limits Music Festival—and did he have a miserable time! The music seems to have been enjoyable enough, but Bruni’s own pleasure was seriously diminished by…

In All the King’s Men (1946), Robert Penn Warren’s novel inspired by Huey Long, Warren uses a narrator, Jack Burden, to show the simultaneously corrosive and transformative effect that proximity to power can have, even on people of goodwill. We learn in James Romm’s Dying Every Day that it has ever…

It is not clear at the time of writing if Turkey will or will not allow the United States to use the NATO air base at Incirlik for airstrikes against ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq. On October 13, national security adviser Susan Rice announced that Turkey had finally agreed to the use of the base,…

If you go see the universally praised Birdman, the story of an over-the-hill film star trying to make a comeback by starring in a Broadway play, I hope you enjoy yourself. I really do. That’s what movies are for—to provide enjoyment, a few hours of diversion. Genuine art transcends that shallow…

The Scrapbook is sorry to hear that Andrew Marshall is retiring from the Pentagon, where he has led the Department of Defense’s internal think tank, the Office of Net Assessment, since 1973. Frankly, The Scrapbook is also a bit surprised. Marshall’s popular nickname, Yoda—taken from the sage of the…

Supposing Republicans win a big victory on November 4. What then?

Utica, Mich.

Democratic senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina was pounded last winter and spring in TV ads by conservative groups for having voted for Obamacare and echoed President Obama’s false claim that people could keep their current health insurance. “They had her on the ropes,” says Marc Rotterman, a…

The Scrapbook has no particular investment in Sarah Palin’s career at this date. She no longer holds public office and seems content with her speaking and TV gigs. Certainly, she is still a politically outspoken public figure, but this in no way justifies the media obsession with her.

A lot of people worry about Ebola these days. Not me. I’m calm, relatively speaking. That is, I’m calm, relative to the shuddering, sobbing basket case that the mere thought of infectious disease once reduced me to.

Indications of a midterm GOP wave are making Republicans more optimistic about the party’s 2016 presidential chances. Data from a recent 50-state poll offer support for that feeling. But the survey also shows the party’s core economic message may not be as popular as many Republicans think.

It is becoming increasingly clear how important it is to liberals to try to insulate Obamacare from what is shaping up as another “shellacking.”  Sure, a few months after House Democrats passed Obamacare (over unanimous Republican opposition), they lost more House seats (63) while also losing…

Colorado Senator Mark Udall's press secretary had unexpectedly complimentary things to say about Udall's Republican challenger, before attempting to backtrack on their praise:

Nancy Pelosi is warning of "Catastrophe." At least, that's what she is saying in her latest appeal for cash before Tuesday's election.

A new Des Moines Register poll shows Republican Joni Ernst capturing a majority of Iowa voters and besting her Democratic rival Rep. Bruce Braley by a significant margin:

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

WRTV reports that around 30,000 are going to lose their health care plans due to Obamacare in Indiana:

The highly-respected Des Moines Register poll released Saturday evening shows Republican Joni Ernst opening up a substantial lead over Democrat Bruce Braley: 

In the final days of a close Senate race, the New Hampshire Republican party is running Facebook ads tying Democrat Jeanne Shaheen to amnesty for illegal immigrants. The party has four ads that calls out the "Obama-Shaheen immigration plan" and claims Republican challenger Scott Brown will "fight…

Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen told reporters Friday that issues regarding national security and the threat from Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS don't "come up very often" when she campaigns across New Hampshire.

This election might determine whether the "climate crisis" is solved, former Vice President Al Gore claims. The former politician makes the statement in a fundraising email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Ed Gillespie continues to close the gap on Mark Warner in the Virginia Senate race, causing Real Clear Politics to move the race from “Likely Dem” to “Leans Dem.”  Virginia is currently the only Senate race in that category, which suggests it’s the GOP’s best chance to stage a substantial upset on…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the October 27th Issue's Books and Arts section.

On Tuesday those of us who have not already availed ourselves of postal ballots or early voting will troop to the polls to elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives, 36 of the 100 senators, 36 governors, and a host of politicians vying for local office. These old-fashioned voters will…