January 2015

Way back when, a Dallas Cowboys running back named Duane Thomas was asked, in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, what it was like to play in the “ultimate game.”

President Obama left the White House to lunch with Vernon Jordan. He's accompanied by Valerie Jarrett. 

Outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told CNN that ground troops may be required to fight ISIS. "It could be necessary," Hagel said.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the February 2nd issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Books & Arts section.

On April 5, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt did it right here in the White House. On August 15, 1971 Richard Nixon came back from Camp David and did it. On September 22, 1985, Ronald Reagan went to the Plaza Hotel and did it.

The jewelry that the women on the screen wear is made from silver and turquoise, matching their ornate and beautiful dresses. This is Miss Navajo, a 2007 documentary that examines issues of history and culture as it follows 21-year-old Navajo Crystal Frazier’s attempt to become Miss Navajo…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Mitt Romney, Bill Belichick, and Hillary Clinton.

We all know that Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and the Patriots are big, filthy cheaters. (They are also awesome.) But evidence is beginning to pile up suggesting that on the specific charge of intentionally deflating footballs, they might be not guilty.

Listen to the president, his staff, and his supporters and you might be ready to believe that the economy is on a rocket ride to prosperity.  More jobs, lower gas prices, increased consumer spending.  So now, at last, we can afford to do away with sequestration and other implements of austerity.…

At an event this morning, Vice President Joe Biden told Democrats that, "To state the obvious, the past six years have been really, really hard for this country."

Hugh Hewitt scoops that Mitt Romney will not run for presidenti n 2016. Here's Romney's statement, via Hewitt:

An MSNBC reported recalled a conversation with David Axelrod, in which the former adviser to President Obama said he still doesn't know Hillary Clinton's running for president:

Senator Tom Cotton, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

A new book set to be released next week alleges that the CIA took steps to prevent anti-American tirades from Chinese Communist officials from being heard in America. The details are revealed in Michael Pillsbury's The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global…

Vice President Joe Biden kicked off 2015 leading a presidential delegation to Brazil for the inauguration of Dilma Rousseff as president of that country. The vice president was only in the country on New Year's Day, for the inauguration and an hour-long meeting with Rousseff before returning to St.…

CNN’s Barbara Starr reports that the U.S. military and intelligence community thinks that one member of the so-called Taliban Five “has attempted to return to militant activity from his current location in Qatar.” Officials aren’t saying which one of the five Taliban leaders, who were held at…

In a statement from Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas senator blasts the Obama administration for going after Israel instead of Iran.

Justin Sink at The Hill writes that:

New York governor Andrew Cuomo, not content with President Obama’s proposal to make junior colleges free, recently introduced his own plan for New York to essentially waive the first two years of student debt payments for college graduates living in the state.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Adam J. White on his blog post "The Constitution Doesn't Let President Close Congress's Doors to Israel."

Alabama's Jeff Sessions, once the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement today that he opposes the nomination of Loretta Lynch for attorney general. Sessions cited Lynch's answers in Thursday's nomination hearing to his questions about President Obama's executive…

This item from Mike Allen is simply gobstopping:

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham has launched a new political action committee for "testing the waters" for a presidential run in 2016. The Republican, in his third term, has started Security Through Strength, a PAC that bluntly describes itself as a group to "fund the infrastructure and…

Ever since March 2014 when President Obama referred to Russian aggression against Ukraine as an "invasion," administration officials have avoided that word in conjunction with the ongoing conflict. In fact, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt's declared on April 29, 2014, that "Russian…

Back in December, after the mass resignation of the The New Republic staff and general implosion of the existing magazine, one of the departing editors asked pointed question about the magazine's new, reactionary left-wing direction: 

Wednesday evening’s Fox News Special Report featured the following exchange between Bret Baier and House Speaker John Boehner:

The Obama administration is angry with Israel. Here's the administration's house organ, the New York Times, this morning:

Mitt and Ann Romney will be having lunch this week with Chelsea Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky. The New York Times, which first reported the news, thinks it might be "awkward."

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Gina McCarthy took to the EPA and White House blogs Wednesday to declare that "We Must Act Now to Protect Our Winters." McCarthy was in Aspen, CO, last week, the famous ski destination and home to an X-Games venue, and she warned that without…

In his 2008 victory speech, President Obama declared that:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Jonathan Last on his blog post "Two Cheers for the Patriots."

Harry Reid has long insisted that he's "pro-life" on the issue of abortion, but on Wednesday his Senate Majority PAC sent out a fundraising email calling legislation to ban most abortions during the final four months of pregnancy "our WORST NIGHTMARE":

Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic congresswoman and Iraq war veteran, ramped up her criticism of the Obama administration on Tuesday for refusing to identify Islamist terrorists as Islamist terrorists. 

A White House spokesman refused to call the Taliban a "terrorist group," though he did admit ISIS is a terrorist organization:

Two gunmen entered the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli Tuesday morning. When their shooting rampage was over, at least ten people had been killed. For jihadists in Libya, the hotel was an inviting target. Foreign diplomats, Western tourists and officials from Libya’s rival governments are known to…

Matt Lewis has a column today over at the Daily Beast headlined, "You Betcha I Was Wrong About Sarah Palin: It’s time to admit that, whatever their motivation was at the time, the Alaska governor’s critics always had a point." I don't really disagree with much of what Matt says when it comes to…

The New England Patriots are my guilty sports pleasure.

The North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, will visit Moscow in May. 

Bernie Becker of the The Hill writes that:

The first ad making the case for Scott Walker for president of the United States, from his newly formed committee called Our American Revival:

The U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, the largest and most expensive in the world, cost at least $700 million to build by the time of its completion in 2009. Several years later in 2012, the embassy was scheduled for a $115 million upgrade as the Washington Post reported at the time. However, in spite…

Vice President Joe Biden appeared to be the butt of a joke on tonight's Parks and Recreation, when a character on the show pulled out the (sadly) nonexistent Biden the Rails: 1001 Poems Inspired by My Travels Through Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, by Joe Biden:

It's worth re-reading Fred Baumann on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was born 259 years ago today:

According to this Reuters headline, Germany is getting its game face on

Elliott Abrams, writing for National Review Online:

Keeping us safe from ourselves has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Consumer groups, environmental organizations, the trial bar, the medical establishment, university researchers, and the government are all working together, doing all they can to prevent us from making what they consider to…

It’s been several weeks since the actor and comedian Patton Oswalt (you may remember him from his star turn as “Toast A Bun Manager” in 2009’s Observe and Report) outraged his tens of thousands of Twitter followers with the following suggestion: 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with contributing editor John Podhoretz on his review of American Sniper.

Lt. General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, blasted the Obama administration’s approach to the War on Terror in a hard-hitting speech to a meeting of intelligence professionals. “The dangers to the U.S. do not arise from the arrogance of American power, but from…

American Sniper is easily the most authentic looking and sounding movie that Hollywood has made about American troops at war since Black Hawk Down.

The latest from Conversations With Bill Kristol, featuring Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield:

Last week, I wrote about how the professional left was attacking Clint Eastwood's new biopic about Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. American Sniper is almost exclusively about the struggles and heroism of one remarkable man who fought in the Iraq war, but the film's critics can't seem to forgive the…

Predictions of a robustly growing economy may prove as evanescent as yesterday’s winter storm warnings.  As Michelle Jamrisko of Bloomberg reports:

In a 60 Minutes interview with Scott Pelley, parts of which aired on Sunday, House speaker John Boehner and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made it sound like they are no closer to producing the elusive Obamacare alternative than they were five long years ago. 

If the storm were a Broadway play, it would have closed after opening night.  Which, in a way, it did.  The headine from CNBC reads:

On CNN this morning, the host kissed Mayor Bill de Blasio before she interviewed him, and handed him a cup of hot chocolate:

The White House launched a new campaign this week to build support for President Obama's executive action on immigration. Although the campaign is to feature state-by-state advantages weekly over the new few months, one of the purported nationwide benefits of the president's actions is what amounts…

Governor Chris Christie is warning folks to get home by 9 p.m., before the worst of the snow storm is expected. New Jersey (and other states) are expecting to get hit by a blizzard tonight.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on his feature story "Hard Times for Hezbollah."

The Hill is reporting that:

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming address to Congress, at Congress's invitation, is drawing significant criticism -- that much is no great surprise. What does surprise, however, is one particular criticism: that the event will be not just bad policy, but even unconstitutional. 

Bloomberg is reporting that

Rancho Mirage, California

Obama administration officials have been effusive in their praise for late Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz who died last week at the age of 90. Now comes word that chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey is establishing a "research and essay competition" at the US…

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is stepping up his criticism of President Obama’s plan to regulate the internet, warning that new rules will lead to the types of taxes and fees slapped on telephones and cable service.

The headline from The Hill reads:

President Obama is being knocked by local press for chewing gum today at the Republic Day parade in India.

Bill Kristol, along with Cokie Roberts, Donna Brazile, and Sara Fagen, on ABC's This Week:

Two weeks after taking over Congress in the new year, congressional Republicans adjourned to Hershey, Pennsylvania, for a bicameral retreat to plan the next two years. The meeting came as the GOP enjoys its highest marks in years from an electorate generally skeptical of politics and cynical about…

To begin to convey a sense of what an extraordinary and compelling figure Harry V. Jaffa was, I offer a confession: The only class notes I have kept from college or graduate school are contained in the dog-eared, green notebook from my courses with Jaffa, and I keep it in my top desk drawer. In…

Just as John Kerry was meeting with his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif in Geneva last week as part of the ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran announced it was building two new nuclear reactors in the Bushehr region. That’s perfectly okay, said the State Department, since…

Walter Berns, a leading figure in the study of constitutional law for nearly half a century, enjoyed an advantage over most other scholars in this field: He never attended law school. Unburdened by this professional training, Berns brought to his subject the fresh perspective of an outsider who had…

The Imitation Game is the fanciest ABC Afterschool Special ever made: It takes the inspiring, mystifying, and upsetting life story of a great genius and turns it into a didactic and banal lesson about how people who are “different” are also very, very special.

As Charles Dickens’s Child’s History of England makes plain, Charles II was not an upstanding individual: “Whenever you see his portrait, with his swarthy, ill-looking face and great nose, you may fancy him at his court in Whitehall surrounded by the worst vagabonds in the kingdom (though they were…

Every time I return to the poetry of Wallace Stevens, I am struck by how the world of his work appears bleak, emptied, almost entirely unpopulated. Even the perceiver who voices his philosophical lyrics is concealed for the sake of foregrounding perception itself, that the intermingling play of…

While a pair of former GOP governors are dominating the news in the early stages of the 2016 presidential race, no fewer than six sitting Republican governors appear to be positioning themselves for presidential bids. Each of them—like every governor—has had to decide whether to accept or decline…

On September 4, 2014, as the NATO summit convened in Wales, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron coauthored an op-ed in the Times of London. Its headline: “We will not be cowed by barbaric killers.” On January 15, a mere four and a half months later, the same coauthors had the…

"On January 6, the [University of Chicago] Committee on Free Expression released a report addressing the issue of freedom of expression on campus. The committee consists of seven professors at the University who were appointed in July to draft a statement that articulates the University’s…

This new biography recalls George Whitefield, the 18th-century English evangelist, as probably the most recognizable celebrity of his age. He was certainly the most traveled, crisscrossing the Atlantic countless times and preaching to audiences, sometimes in the tens of thousands, up and down the…

France’s momentary appearance on the world stage as a champion of free expression, after the execution of the beloved Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, made for a break in her relentless culture of repression of free speech, which she shares with most of Europe. Aside from a handful of…

The Scrapbook was recently witness to a harmonic convergence. It began the other evening as we set out, on foot, from The Weekly Standard offices to dinner at a restaurant two blocks east of the White House. It was a cold night and, wrapped securely against the wind in overcoat, scarf, gloves, and…

Given the general debasement of Western culture it seems that nothing in the 21st century is sacred—nothing, that is, except what might potentially incite violent Muslims. As we are learning after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the intellectual cowardice on this matter is immeasurable. The latest news…

Speaker of the House John Boehner told CBS's 60 Minutes that he's "interested in working with" President Barack Obama:

President Obama will give a Super Bowl Sunday interview to a host of NBC's Today Show, Savannah Guthrie. The news tucked away in a Los Angeles Times profile of the host.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says it won't be easy to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. The outgoing Pentagon chief made the comments to NPR:

Denis McDonough appeared to slip up in an interview with ABC when he revealed the previously unknown name on an American being held by ISIS:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Jonathan V. Last reading his casual essay "Brickenomics 101."

"The United States is losing the war with radical Islamists," Newt Gingrich told a group of conservatives at the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines. 

New Jersey governor Chris Christie spoke earlier today at Rep. Steve King's Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines. Christie may well have been the 2016 presidential candidate at the confab with the reputation for the most moderate conservative views. But while at first he was greeted with very modest…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the January 26th issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Books & Arts section.

President Obama confirmed and condemned the death of a Japanese man at the hands of the Islamic State in this statement:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen Hayes on the bad week for the Obama White House and the NFL.

Anyone reading this knows where he was on September 11, 2001. A diminishing number remember where they were on January 30, 1965—the day we said farewell to Winston Churchill. (He died fifty years ago, January 24, 1965.)

News today came that Marco Rubio looks likely to run for president. What to make of this?

Japan’s government is running out of time, writes Adam Pasick at Quartz:

Secretary of State John Kerry argued that, as the Associated Press phrased it, "violent extremism is not Islamic" in a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos:

Louisiana governor and potential presidential candidate Bobby Jindal said it was a "shame" that House Republican leaders had to put aside a bill banning abortions occuring after the 20th week of pregnancy. Speaking on Fox News Thursday night, the Republican said, "it shouldn't take a lot of…

This Washington Post headline pretty much explains that government is our business—and business is very good:

The Emergency Committee for Israel will host a reception for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits Washington, D.C. The reception for Bibi is because President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry refuse to meet with him.

In spite of his own mostly impressive educational pedigree, President Obama has always harbored an anti-intellectual (or, to be generous, anti-academic) streak. Whether insulting art history in a failed appeal to "Real 'Muricans," or developing a philistine "College Scorecard," which reduces the…

Michael Bloomberg expressed interest in buying the New York Times, a new report in New York magazine says. "For years now, it has been speculated in media circles that Mike Bloomberg could be a white knight and save the New York Times. Now it appears he may actually have tried to do it," reads the…

The deadline to get taxpayer subsidized healthcare is coming up quickly. In an apparent effort to increase enrollment in Obamacare, Facebook ads are running trying to get users to checkout the website.

Westminster Abbey announced on Twitter that it's flying its flag at half staff after the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

A number of Republicans will pick an immediate fight with this book. First, one of its premises is that from the New Deal to the advent of Reagan conservatism, black Republicans lost an internal fight for the heart and soul of Lincoln’s house—and with that loss, the party founded on the ideal of…

The green-lipstick wearing interviewer of President Barack Obama expressed her concern that the "po-po" (meaning: police officer) might shoot and kill her husband. The interviewer, GloZell Green, made the remarks to the president in an "interview" held today at the White House:

President Obama sat down "interviews" with YouTube stars this afternoon. As one of the interviews ended, one of the stars, Hank Green, asked Obama for an autograph:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Philip Terzian reading Joseph Epstein's casual essay "That's a Nickel."

 Late Thursday, the White House released via Twitter President Obama's annual statement commemorating the anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. As he has in several previous statements, the president cast the decision as critical in "ensuring that our daughters have the same…

Having followed Romney around in both 2008 and 2012, I was always convinced that the odds of him running in 2016 were high. For one thing, the man has a decades-long history of running for office, over and over, even after voters reject him. He’s a career politician without a “career” in politics.…

In a press conference with reporters today on Capitol Hill, Harry Reid described what he's been up to since injuring his face and ribs in an exercising accident:

Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be in Washington in March to address a joint session of Congress. But President Obama will not be meeting with the leader of America's ally. 

Hillary Clinton has not been especially aggressive on ideas and policy.  On money, however, it is a different story.

A rare statement released from the Mossad, which is meant to deny reports that say the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, favors not imposing additional sanctions on Iran:

While many critics skewer President Obama’s recent amnesty-granting executive action, D.C.’s municipal lawmakers have their own plans for the next battle on the immigration-citizenship front. Invoking considerations of fairness and justice against “anti-immigrant hysteria,” D.C. council member…

Secretary of State John Kerry met with EU High Representative Federica Mogherini at the State Department Wednesday and afterwards addressed the press and took some questions. One question from a French reporter concerned problems with Muslim integration in Europe and the potential terrorism…

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a couple paid speeches in Canada yesterday. She was reportedly accompanied by 65 agents of the United States Secret Service to at least one of the events.

Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, a Republican of North Carolina, has been raising concerns about a late-term abortion ban that the House is scheduled to vote on this week, but she said Wednesday afternoon that she will vote for the bill even if it comes to the floor without changes she wants in it.

In last night's State of the Union, President Obama reiterated his call upon Congress to pass a new "AUMF" -- or Authorization for Use of Military Force -- against ISIS, rather than continuing to wage war pursuant to the original 2001 AUMF against al Qaeda and its collaborators.

So did the New England Patriots actually cheat last Sunday when they beat the Indianapolis Colts in a 45-7 laugher? Well, the game was certainly important.  Winning meant another trip to the Super Bowl for the Patriots.  And, then, the Patriots have a history. Back in 2007 the team was busted by…

The office of Harry Reid announced that the top Democrat in the Senate will undergo eye surgery to recover "full vision in his right eye." He'll miss a week of work while he's recovering.

Given that nine in ten African-American women voted for Democrats in 2014, it may be no surprise that a focus group of urban, female, African-Americans had mostly contempt for all things “Republican” or “conservative.” But what was shocking is that this group also, unprompted, uniformly opposed…

Republicans have been tripping over one another to slag President Obama’s tax proposal, made in his State of the Union address, to repeal the step-up in basis on inherited wealth and use the revenue it would generate to increase the child tax credit and pay for free community college. While it’s…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on President Obama's State of the Union address.

What should be a recovery on steroids – after all, it has had six years to get in shape – is still not up to speed.  If there were as many people in the labor force now, as there were when President Obama came into office, the unemployment rate would be close to 10%.  And the spirit of…

There were lots of what they call “takeaways” in the speech. That’s the way that crack speechwriters craft them and the way crack correspondents report them. Most of those lines just roll over the rest of us. But there was one, last night, that jumped out at you.  As Government Executive reports,…

At a hearing this morning on Capitol Hill, Democratic senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey blasted the Obama administration talking points on Iran:

House speaker John Boehner has invited Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on February 11. The invitation is meant to be a repudiation of President Obama's Iran policy, according to a draft Boehner's prepared remarks this morning to the House Republican…

Possible presidential candidate Carly Fiorina confronted President Obama's top adviser, Valerie Jarrett, over the White House paying female employees less than their male counterparts:

Joe Biden told ABC News this morning that there's "a chance" he'll challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. He called the race "wide-open."

We know that supply-side economics emphasizes serious cuts in tax rates and Keynesianism relies on massive amounts of government spending.  But how in the world does “middle class economics” work?  After President Obama cited it repeatedly in State of the Union speech, I waited and waited for him…

MNSBC's Andrea Mitchell knocked President Obama's description of the world in the State of the Union address as "not close reality":

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol on President Obama's State of the Union address:

President Obama knocked "constant fundraising" in his State of the Union address delivered tonight from Washington:

President Obama taunted Republicans with an off the cuff remark:

Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared to fall asleep during President Obama's lenghty State of the Union address:

President Obama talked about spending a lot of money tonight -- on preschool care, community college, new infrastructure, and a variety of tax preferences for middle- and lower-income earners. All financed by new taxes, primarily on the wealthy.

Just before his election in 2008, candidate Barack Obama declared that "we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." From the closing lines of Tuesday's State of the Union address, it appears that a little more than six years later, now President Obama thinks…

The office of House speaker John Boehner has posted the full text of the Republican response to the State of the Union (breaking its own self-imposed embargo), to be delivered by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa:

President Obama will talk about ISIS in tonight's State of the Union Address. He'll talk about Iran. And he'll talk about North Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan. (He won't mention "al Qaeda.")

The prepared text of President Obama's State of the Union address:

President Obama won't claim victory of the Islamic State. But in tonight's State of the Union he will say that he (or "American leadership") is "stopping" its "advance."

According to a statement issued by the White House on Tuesday, President Obama would veto a bill banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the point at which infants are capable of feeling pain and surviving long-term if born.

Washington and the political class are as excited as Hollywood on Oscar night.  It’s the … State of the Union.  Which is to say … another partisan political speech, only longer.

When to mention race and when not? My fellow journalists who covered the funeral of the woman who died in the D.C. Metro last week chose not to mention it. Perhaps they deemed it a distraction, too fraught a subject to bring up at a solemn, family time. My own opinion, for what it’s worth, is that…

Capitalizing once again on Vice President Joe Biden's infamous hot-mic gaffe from 2010, a White House video promoting President Obama's Tuesday night State of the Union speech closes with "IT'S A BFD." 

The hideous practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) is neither an exclusively Muslim nor a principally Middle Eastern phenomenon. It exists among non-Muslims through wide areas of Africa.

A "die-in" protest greeted Democratic Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar yesterday in St. Paul, Minnesota, at an event marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Other notable politicians present include Governor Mark Dayton and Rep. Keith Ellison.

Today, America bids farewell to the Magna Carta. The 800-year old document returns home to Lincolnshire, England, after six months in America. It landed at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in July, and spent the past few months at the Library of Congress.

Under President Obama, $7.5 trillion has been added to the national debt. The number is being highlighted by the Republican National Committee ahead of President Obama's State of the Union address, which will be delivered tonight from Washington. 

Football great Mike Ditka says that, if he had an 8-year-old son right now, he wouldn't let him play football. He made the remarks in an episode of HBO's Real Sports, which will air tonight.

ISIS continues waging war according to its own savage rules and no nation, it seems, is immune.  As Jane Onyanga-Omara of USA Today reports:

White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer said over the weekend that President Obama's entire State of the Union plan would "absolutely not" be passed by Congress. Now the Associated Press is saying that speech's goal is to influence the 2016 presidential election debate.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on why Hollywood's leftists hate the new box office sensation "American Sniper."

Barack Obama and his disciples began worrying about his legacy even before he took office.  He would not be satisfied to be judged competent or good.  He was going to be a transformative president. He has been widely mocked for claiming that his election would mark the moment when the seas began to…

Meeting with Italian defense officials in Rome Monday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said that the threat to the world from Islamic terrorism is "probably a 30-year issue." The Army News Service reports:

Coming on the heels of a spate of revelations regarding corruption in the Israeli government – as well as worrisome signs of dysfunction in Israeli governance, exposed during last summer’s unresolved campaign against Hamas – the Israeli public was shocked again recently by yet more revelations of…

The office of Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia has released this statement:

In this week's newsletter, Bill Kristol reports the results of the un-scientific reader poll of the 2016 Republican presidential field:

Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor who had been investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center (the AMIA building) in Argentina, has been found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment. Nisman was famous in intelligence and law enforcement circles for amassing evidence that implicates…

The president is proposing more higher education (at the community college level) as a cure for our economic woes.  Along with some substantial tax increases, of course.  But is more college the answer?  Or should we, perhaps, be concerned about the quality of the college we already have when, as…

Throughout his presidency, Barack Obama has repeatedly said he isn't set on just implementing his own agenda -- if other people have ideas, he wants to hear them. In fact, the day after the 2014 elections when Republicans expanded their majority in the House and took control of the Senate, the…

Reuters reports:

Traditionally, the new year is a time for reflection on the year that ended and predictions about the one to come. Conservatives had an excellent 2014, as the Republican party gained control of the Senate, won more House seats than at any time since the Great Depression, and made historic gains in…

What does it mean to be a conservative today? It may mean defending individual freedom against bureaucratic largess. “Freedom” was the anthem for the political right in the time of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, yet “that word demands a context,” Roger Scruton writes here. He answers that…

At the annual conference of the American Historical Association in New York City this month, anti-Israeli activist historians suffered a rare double defeat. Calling themselves Historians Against War (HAW), the group pushed first for an academic boycott of Israel, then for condemnation of alleged…

After the recent massacre by Islamic terrorists at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, people around the world took to social media to declare “Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie.” Solidarity is a nice sentiment, and journalists in particular are fond of uttering self-soothing words about…

The jihadists responsible for the most successful terrorist attack in France in decades hunted down cartoonists. They did not target a significant historical landmark, such as the Eiffel Tower, or any well-known French politicians. They did not seek to maximize civilian casualties in a suicide…

The marketing genius of movies like Selma, the highly praised docudrama about the march in Alabama that triggered the 1965 Voting Rights Act, is that they simultaneously confuse and intimidate critics and audiences by making them feel as though it would be an act of disrespect to speak anything but…

Martin Anderson, the economist and adviser to Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan foremost among them, died this past week. The Scrapbook remembered with a pang being hosted by him one pleasant afternoon more than a decade ago at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he was for many…

At a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society in 1919, Arthur Eddington announced a discovery that turned physics on its head. Eddington had measured the position of a star cluster near the limb of the sun during a total solar eclipse; the stars appeared to have moved…

Last week was not a great week for Princeton. 

"Poetry is a window into the soul. And one lesson to me from the reaction to my ‘When Whites Just Don’t Get It’ series is that we need soul-searching about race in America. So I invited readers this month to submit poems about race. Thanks to everyone for sending in more than 300 poems, and I’m…

I once appeared on a panel at the National Endowment for the Humanities with two women who talked about the importance of their secondary education. One was German and spoke reverently of the gymnasium she was fortunate enough to attend. The other, an American, spent her adolescence in France and…

The New York Giants faced the Baltimore Colts, and the winners would be the champions of the National Football League. But while it was a championship game, it did not sell out, meaning television was blacked out in the city where it was played. The Giants had the better record so the game was…

There are 6,100 streets in Paris. If you made a point of walking a different one each day, it would take you more than 16 years to see them all. That’s just meant to be illustrative​—​you can cover many more of them than that in a day, as The Scrapbook often made a point of doing in its student…

Last February, Harvard’s Belknap Press issued the final volume of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Collected Works, a project that had taken over 40 years. It was conceived at the beginning of what is now called “The Emerson Revival.” Before the 1970s, Harvard professor Lawrence Buell remarks, “even…

Republicans have now won two Obamacare elections, the first in 2010 and the second in 2014. (In 2012, their presidential nominee chose not to engage on the issue.) In the lead-up to their latest victory, Republicans ran far more ads against Obamacare than either party ran for or against anything…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the January 19th issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

President Obama's former defense secretary and former head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, said this morning on CNN that we've entered into "a much more dangerous chapter" of the war on terror:

The White House knows President Obama's plan, which he'll lay out this week in the State of the Union Address, is unrealistic. Dan Pfeiffer, a top White House adviser, said so earlier today on CBS:

Stephanie Cutter, a deputy campaign manager in President Obama's reelection campaign, said this morning on CBS that Vice President Joe Biden "would be a very good candidate" in the 2016 presidential race: 

The Associated Press White House correspondent, Julie Pace, described President Obama's trip to India later this week as an entrance into the "lame duck" part of his presidency:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the January 5 & 12 double issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

If you are a German and fancy Pegida, or a Brit and fancy UKIP, or a Frenchman and enjoy marching with the National Front, it’s a reasonable guess that you don’t like immigrants. If you’re an American, the story is different. There is a lady in the harbor to welcome the legal ones and a man in the…

In the days since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the response from American politicians has ranged from pathetic to parodic. Through his press secretary, President Obama expressed regret on Monday that neither he nor any other high-ranking American official joined 44 world leaders who marched…

In the days since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the response from American politicians has ranged from pathetic to parodic. President Obama expressed regret on Monday through his press secretary that neither he nor any other high-ranking American official joined 44 world who marched alongside…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on John Kerry's visit to Paris.

The New York Times reports that Marilyn Tavenner is stepping down:

The news on race relations in the U.S. is disturbing. From Rasmussen's latest poll:

The office of House speaker John Boehner has a Buzzfeed-style blog post featuring pop superstar Taylor Swift that attempts to respond to President Obama's proposal to offer Americans two years of free community college. Titled "12 Taylor Swift GIFs for you," the post employs the popular animated…

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

The Republicans in congress have some plans for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the Supreme Court will be considering the possibility that that language in the bill itself might, if followed literally, doom the program.  

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Paris Friday in what was billed as a show of solidarity with the French people after terrorists attacked last week. The former Massachusetts senator brought fellow Bay Stater and singer-songwriter James Taylor to sing a slightly off-key rendition of…

Gordon Lubold writes, at Defense One, that:

"Abortion stops a beating heart" has long been a poignant rallying cry for the pro-life movement. Abortion rights advocates often characterize the unborn as an impersonal "clump of cells" that a woman may choose to do with whatever she wants. But even as the House of Representatives plans a January…

At a press conference today, Speaker John Boehner addressed the arrest of a man who allegedly planned to poison him in Ohio:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with frequent contributor Thomas Joscelyn on Al Qaeda's role in the Paris masscare of Charlie Hebdo journalists.

Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa will be delivering the Republican response to the State of the Union Address, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced today in a press conference. 

The White House says President Obama signed a presidential memo "directing agencies to allow federal workers to take six weeks of advanced paid sick leave to care for a new child, ill family members, and for other sick leave-eligible uses."

After the State of the Union Address next week, President Obama will turn to YouTube personalities to answer questions.

John Kerry is going to France today to give "a big hug to Paris," a week after the brutal terrorist attacks there.

Ali Akbar Darieni of the AP reports that:

Steve Hayes, with Chuck Lane and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

Bloomberg is reporting that:

A woman alleged to have been the fixer for Jeffrey Epstein, a pedophile and friend of Bill Clinton, has herself long had ties to the former president of the United States. Indeed, it's clear that even as her associate, Epstein, admitted to procuring sex with someone under the age of 18 and…

In April, the Obama administration announced plans for financial aid, advisers, and 'non-lethal' security assistance for Ukraine in its struggle against Russian encroachment on its territory. Eight months later, citing the "urgent and compelling need to establish security and stability," the White

The Department of Defense announced this evening that five more terrorists have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay. This time, four have been transferred to Oman and one to Estonia. Here's the press release announcing the release to Oman:

An institute named for the father of possible presidential candidate Rand Paul has published a piece saying the Charlie Hebdo massacre, like 9/11, was a false flag operation. The claim comes in piece titled, "Charlie Hebdo Shootings: False Flag?," put online today at the Ron Paul Institute.

Seems the Iraqis don’t think the U.S. is pulling its weight in the fight with ISIS. As Ahmed Rasheed and Ned Parker of Reuters report:

The FBI claims it has broken up an ISIS terror plot on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. ABC reports:

The White House is accusing Republicans intent on stopping President Obama's executive amnesty as "essentially" voting for amnesty. "This vote is bad policy. It is essentially a vote for amnesty. It is also bad politics," the White House spokesman told reporters aboard Air Force One.

 Lucia Mutikani of Reuters writes:

Ever since the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, proponents of robust economic growth and sensible regulation have been trying to rein it in.

The editors of Commentary write:

In a grim interview last month with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s online magazine Dabiq, Moath al Kasasbah—the Jordanian pilot shot down and captured during a recent bombing run over Syria—was asked if he knew what ISIS would do to him. “Yes,” he said, “they will kill me.”

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate, will give a major foreign policy address next week in London. According to early excerpts of the address, Jindal will use the speech to bash Hillary Clinton, the likely 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, and…

The White House branched out into yet another social media venue Tuesday. Upworthy, the popular you-won't-believe-what-happened-next site, was given an exclusive White House video of President Obama discussing the executive action he plans to take to improve Internet speeds in U.S. cities. In true…

The Pentagon called the hacking of the Central Command's (CENTCOM) YouTube and Twitter accounts Monday "cyber vandalism" in a letter to service members and their families to allay concerns about the incident. General Lloyd Austin said that the FBI is investigating the "alleged breach" of the two…

The White House won't be calling jihadists adherents to "radical Islam." At least, that's the reasonable take away from this extraordinary exchange the White House press secretary had today with a reporter:

Ted Cruz released this statement in favor of moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to that nation's capital, Jerusalem:

Under a cloudless Jerusalem sky, a crowd of thousands gathered at the cemetery at Givat Shaul on Tuesday, to bury the four Jews murdered at the Hyper Cacher in Paris. Yoav Hattab, Yohan Cohen, Philippe Braham, and Francois-Michel Saada were laid to rest in Har Hamenuhot, on the approach to…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Islamist terror, the Paris vigil, and President Obama's absence.

The New Republic, a New York-based vertically integrated digital media company, makes the compelling case for a Tom Cotton presidential campaign:

Lynne O'Donnell of the AP is reporting that:

Back in 2012, I suggested that the Senate use Leon Panetta's confirmation hearing for CIA director to clear up one of Washington's more interesting media mysteries—who leaked Daniel Patrick Moynihan's authorship of controversial memo that used the phrase "benign neglect" in reference to the black…

CNN described its reasoning for not showing the latest cover of Charlie Hebdo (the first issue to be published after last week's massacre) in a broadcast this morning:

As the new Congress settles in under Republican control, it can be easy to forget that Republican control of the House of Representatives is a relatively novel concept. Until Newt Gingrich's revolution swept the party into power in 1994, the GOP was accustomed to permanent-minority status.

President Obama honored the NBA champions, the San Antonio Spurs, at the White House Monday, but joked that he almost sent in the second team, Vice President Biden, to host the event to keep himself "fresh for the State of the Union." The president said he would have been just following Spur's…

Protesters gathered outside the Clinton Foundation in New York City to complain about "missing money" from the Haiti recovery effort from the 2010 earthquake:

Quin Hillyer remembers Walter Berns:

White House spokesman Josh Earnest offered this excuse to explain why President Obama skipped the weekend rally in Paris: it would've impacted "common citizens."

Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman and 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee, tells NBC's Alex Moe that he will not seek the presidency in 2016: 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on Islamist terror and President Obama's approach.

It's been almost five years since Obamacare was passed, and the law remains as unpopular as ever—public support hit a record low of 37 percent in November. Opposing Obamacare is a no-brainer for Republicans politically, though the question of what to do about the law remains something that divides…

The terrorist attacks last week in Paris and the debate over the French government response brought back a simple discussion I had a few years ago regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told the press today he doesn't know what President Obama was doing while world leaders gathered in Paris yesterday to rally:

Central Command has been hacked by ISIS, according to messages posted on CentCom's Twitter page:

The terrorist attacks in Paris were nightmarish in many ways, but perhaps the most worrisome news to come out of the Charlie Hebdo affair is that followers of a “pure” al Qaeda affiliate – al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula – and of ISIS – the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – worked together.

Malak Ghobrial of Reuters is reporting that:

Donald Trump says he's once again considering a presidential run. He told MSNBC this morning that he'll make a decision in the next three months:

Tablet has one of the best articles I've seen from Paris, capturing the mood of French Jews--and the meaning for them of the state of Israel. Here are excerpts:

Secretary of State John Kerry said that criticism that he and the Obama administration skipped the unity rally in Paris yesterday is "sort of quibbling a little bit." He made the comments at a press conference in India, after announcing that he'd be visiting France on Thursday.

While the attention of much of the world Sunday was focused on the massive unity rally in France in response to the recent terror attacks in that country, Secretary of State John Kerry was in India for a "global business" summit where he spoke of, among other concerns, the "one enormous cloud…

House Homeland Security Committee chair Mike McCaul said on CBS that he expects to "see more and more" of the Paris style attacks take place around the world:

Bill Kristol reports that Harry V. Jaffa passed away yesterday:

Ariel Sharon died one year ago today, on January 11, 2014. It seems that he’s been gone for much longer, no doubt because he was in a coma after January 2006.

The White House announced today its next step in fighting extremism: a meeting. "On February 18, 2015, the White House will host a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism to highlight domestic and international efforts to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting,…

Here's David Brooks's review of the late Walter Berns's 2001 book, Making Patriots, from our May 21, 2001 issue:

Walter Berns, the great constitutional scholar and defender of the American republic, died today. He was 95. Generations of students have learned from his work, and will continue to do so. Those of us who knew him looked up to him and admired him unreservedly. He was at once a distinguished…

Bill Clinton once held a knife to her wrist. But now Wendy Clark, who claimed to be "Blood brothers with Bill Clinton," is reportedly going to work for his wife, Hillary Clinton.

President Obama is in a good mood. He believes the country, under his leadership, is heading in the right direction.

It’s us against them—an American economy on the upswing vs. a global economy that definitely is not. Last year the U.S. economy added almost 3 million jobs, the largest number in fifteen years. The headline unemployment rate is down to 5.6 percent, and the so-called U-6 unemployment rate, which…

U.S. Army Col. Joel Rayburn, a senior research fellow at the National Defense University, is a historian who served as an adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq. He is also author of Iraq After America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance (Hoover Institution Press), a thorough account of what’s…

Even in the giddy afterglow of the new Congress, when all things seem possible, few Republicans seriously think that the Affordable Care Act will be repealed in 2015.  More realistically, various politicians have averred that a Republican Congress may have the wherewithal to repeal some of its more…

The Tikvah Fund recorded a conversation the boss had last month in Jerusalem, about his life in politics, with Ran Baratz:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on terrorism abroad, and Jeb Bush's 2016 pitch.

While we earlier estimated the cost of President Obama's "free" community college to be around $34 billion, the White House has finally released its own estimate: $60 billion. 

Reuters and Agence France-Presse report that four hostages at the Kosher market in Paris are dead.

CNN is reporting that the sounds of shots and explosions were heard near the Kosher market in Paris, where a terrorist has reportedly been holding several captives.

It was a good year for jobs. As Bloomberg notes:

Roger Kaplan, a part-time Parisian and Weekly Standard contributor, reflects on the Charlie Hebdo murders:

There are new reports of a hostage situation in Paris at a Kosher market. The Associated Press reports:

President Barack Obama's brief trip to Phoenix Thursday included an off-schedule trip to a housing development and a policy speech at a local high school. But, as NBC affiliate KPNX noted in its report, the president's motorcade drove past the campus of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs hospital, which…

 Previewing an item from his upcoming State of the Union address, President Obama announced a "Free Community College" plan Thursday evening for "anyone who's willing to work for it":

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris and his recent piece "Don't Be Deceived by the Reaction to Charlie Hebdo Massacre—Our Media Are Cowards."

A few hours before the ball dropped in Times Square, the Supreme Court released Chief Justice Roberts's year-end report on the federal judiciary.

Reuters is reporting that 

Confirming a new attorney general is near the top of the new Senate's to-do list. The power not to confirm the president's nominees is near the top of the Republicans' new consignment of political clout. Needless to say, without the White House, the GOP can't implement their preferred policies, but…

The American Enterprise Institute is hosting an event next week (January 12, at noon), titled, "A debate over executive power: Obama’s immigration decision."

President Obama is in Phoenix Thursday, and his motorcade drove past that city's Veterans Affairs hospital without stopping. Politico's White House correspondent reports:

In this week's edition of the boss's email newsletter -- Kristol Clear -- readers are asked to rank their top three picks for the GOP's 2016 presidential nominee. The boss writes:

On a frigid, windy night in Washington, a couple hundred people trekked to the Newseum for a vigil for the murdered French journalists from the Parisian weekly Charlie Hebdo, the police that died trying to protect them, and those that were wounded.

In a mock interview with her grandson, Barbara Boxer announces that she won't run for reelection in 2016:

Over the years we've posted Charlie Hebdo covers, despite other media organizations refusing to do so. Here are some more:

The Colorado Gazette reports this week that “Colorado is taking a novel approach to marijuana education — not telling people to avoid the drug, just to use it safely.”

The Sony hackers made a big mistake by logging into Facebook, according to a report in the New York Times. The mistake, according to the report, revealed the hackers were working for North Korea.

On July 18, 2006, the Clinton Foundation received a $25,000 check from the C.O.U.Q. Foundation, whose president was known pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a friend of Bill Clinton. The donation is revealed in the C.O.U.Q. Foundation's 990 tax form, filed with the IRS.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest explained to reporters today that the United States needs to "redouble" efforts to explain "what the tenets of Islam actually are." He made the comments in response to a question about how the U.S. might respond to the terror attack today in France. 

French authorities have reportedly indentified the three suspects in today’s massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices—Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality has not yet been identified, and two French nationals, Said Kouachi and his younger brother Cherif Kouachi. The French appear to have been well…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris.

A column from Michael Graham, published in 2006 in response to the censoring of Mohammed cartoons:

In the wake of today's massacre in Paris, there has already been a lot of preening about journalistic bravery. Much of it has come from people who, it can be shown, don't have the guts to work in Charlie Hebdo's newsroom. Preening about free speech may be reassuring at times like this, but what we…

Know a college student interested in political philosophy, economic policy, or the study of war? Encourage them to apply to the Hertog Foundation's summer fellowships where they can learn from an outstanding faculty, including some names that will be familiar to WEEKLY STANDARD readers -- Bill…

In remarks from the Oval Office, President Obama warned that the kind of terror attack that took place earlier today in Paris can "happen anywhere in the world."

The Islamist terrorist attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which, so far, has resulted in 12 deaths and many more wounded, should come as no surprise. The satirical weekly has been the target before, having been fire-bombed back in late 2011 after running a…

In remarks this morning from Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry said he agreed with the French imam who called the victims of today's murderous rampage in Paris "martyrs for liberty."

Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby, when asked Tuesday about the number of Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS) fighters killed in ongoing coalition strikes in Iraq and Syria, gave a rather colorful response: "[W]e don't have the ability to -- to count every nose that we schwack." Kirby said…

President Obama's statement on the terror attack in France:

White House press secretary Josh Earnest refrained from calling the attack on a French magazine "terrorism" in an interview this morning on CNN:

This item was originally published on November 2, 2011, and is being re-posted after today's murderous rampage at Charlie Hebdo in France:

**Warning: Some of these videos are extremely graphic.**

The ZeroHedge headline nails it:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the re-election of John Boehner as Speaker of the House, what it means for the caucus, the GOP agenda in 2015 and beyond.

The top Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid, went directly to the camera to discuss his exercising accident:

Vice President Joe Biden mistakenly referred to Iowa senator Joni Ernst as Gail, the name of the senator's husband:

While swearing in senators today in the Capitol, Vice President Joe Biden declared, "I like kids better than people."

Mexican president Peña Nieto called President Obama's executive amnesty "very intelligent" and "an act of justice” in comments today in the Oval Office. He made the comments in Spanish.

President Obama is kicking off the year with a visit to Phoenix this week, but veterans at the Veterans Affairs hospital there shouldn't expect a visit from the commander in chief.

After a weekend exercise accident left the top Democrat in the Senate with broken ribs and bones in the face, Harry Reid is working from home.

CNN has something prepared for its last broadcast before the doomsday clock strikes midnight. Seriously. It was Ted Turner’s idea, and he when he owned the network, he got what he wanted. So there is video, ready to go, for the last CNN employee to key up and run for an audience of … well, who…

While college football fans were riveted to the two playoff games on New Year’s Day (make that one-and-a-half playoff games, as the second half of the Rose Bowl was hardly must-see T.V.), some commentators could hardly wait to seize the moment to criticize the Bowl Championship Series (BCS),…

Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren addressed reporters Monday about the start of the U.S. military training mission of Iraqi and Kurdish forces in Iraq. According to Nick Simeone of DoD News, the Defense Department's own media unit, Warren said that "four battalions of Iraqi security forces…

The year began on a rough note for the U.S. State Department's Think Again, Turn Away anti-terror program. On January 1, the State Department used the program's official Twitter account to tweet a photo collage accompanied by the message, "Entering 2015, taking time to honor some of terror’s many…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with the 2017 Project's Jeffrey H. Anderson on Obamacare and what the GOP can do to stop it in 2015.

It may be the administration’s signature piece of legislation and the foundation upon which its legacy will be built, but there are plenty of people who are not happy with the Affordable Cave Act.  For instance, there are the members of the faculty of Harvard University who, as Robert Pear of…

The office of House speaker John Boehner announces it's kicking off the new Congress with a series of jobs bills.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a CBS reporter that his question was "a clown question, bro."

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich appears on the latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol:

Suicide bombings around the world surged 94 percent last year, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz. The paper credits the Islamic State for the rise in the terror tactic.

The school house for American children is, increasingly, the same one where they eat and sleep and live with their parents.  As Genevieve Wood of the Daily Signal reports:

Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Julian Borger at the Guardian writes that:

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe will "express remorse" for World War II, the Associated Press reports.

Philip Larkin began one of his better-known poems with the arresting observation that Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three / (which was rather late for me)— / Between the end of the Chatterley ban / And the Beatles’ first LP. Larkin was born in 1922, and so would have been in the…

Who is the best young actress in the movies? The obvious answer is Jennifer Lawrence, all of 24 and with a deserved Oscar to her credit for Silver Linings Playbook and a second she should have won for her supporting role in American Hustle. (She’s also the most popular, with her third Hunger Games…

Americans love revolutions. Our national identity began with a revolution, and a revolutionary war that lasted for eight years; and we cheer on other people’s revolutions, as though we find satisfaction in multiplying our own. “I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing & as…

When I first met James Laughlin (1914-1997) in 1974, he was 60: tall, handsome, elegant, witty, and highly regarded as the founder and publisher of what was, to many of us, the great poetry press in the United States—New Directions. From the 1930s on, he had published all the key volumes of Ezra…

Any leverage Washington has over North Korea has been invested in stifling their nuclear program; so you might think the U.S. government has just two available responses to the Hollywood hack: Do nothing or declare war. But, happily, there’s a third option, and it’s firmly grounded in the…

An article in last Sunday’s New York Times, “Raising Ambitions: The Challenge in Teaching at Community Colleges,” caught The Scrapbook’s eye. At a time when higher education is prohibitively expensive and more than a little dysfunctional, community colleges are often underappreciated. However, the…

Late each summer, soon after excited new students arrive at four-year colleges across the country, deans try to sober them up. Some warn that successful students spend “three hours studying outside of class for each hour spent in class.” For at least one moment, students get the impression that…

How easily the small eludes the big. We say that bugs will inherit the Earth, as if it wasn’t theirs already. Bugs made the Earth. Long ago, tiny spineless creatures with legs arrived on the wet shoreline, probably to escape predators at sea, and made land habitable for plants. The simultaneous…

Exactly seventy years ago, Allied forces in Europe experienced an all-too-common occurrence in war: a huge intelligence failure that led to a surprise attack, followed by a horrific battlefield disaster. That it was transformed into victory by the Allies 

From time to time, our contributor Wesley J. Smith has warned in these pages that many animal rights activists are after something more than improving animal welfare​—​a worthy cause, to be sure. They seek, rather, to elevate animals to equal moral and legal status with humans. See, for example,…

Christmas doesn’t really begin until Christmas—Christmas Day itself, that is. And I don’t mean just in the way the Christian churches lay out the season: the whole 12-days-of-Christmas thing, if you remember. And I know you do, because everyone remembers the song about the partridge in a pear tree,…

The Scrapbook has never expected the Obama administration to be on the right side of history when it comes to free trade. However, when the administration quietly announced the week before Christmas that it was imposing massive new tariffs on certain Chinese goods, we admit to being astonished,…

This exhibition is eye-popping. Richard Estes’s hyper-realistic art is somehow more than real. In the introductory panel, Estes himself sets the stage by teasing, “What is real?”   

Now that Republican Jeb Bush has made all the noises of a man running for president, expect the former governor of Florida to be attacked for trying to save the life of Terri Schiavo.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie celebrated the Cowboys playoff victory over the Detroit Lions by hugging Cowboys owner Jerry Jones:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the December 29th issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Gertrude Himmelfarb, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

President Obama released this statement on the loss of ESPN host Stuart Scott:

Mike Huckabee signed off his final Fox News show by saying he's thinking about running for president. "Stay tuned," Huckabee said, alluding to his possible entry into the Republican field.

Mike Huckabee kicked off his final show on Fox News with a lesson on governing -- and a warning:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Michael Warren reading his casual essay "A Philadelphia Story."

Had enough good economic news to see you through the holidays? Good. But if you plan to ask, “Please, sir, I want some more” you might be in store for your own Oliver Twist moment. Here’s why:

The White House spokesman announced the sanctioning of North Korea for the "destructive and coercive cyber attack on Sony."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the new year, the College Football Playoff, Foreign Policy, and Politics.

Harry Reid had an accident while exercising, the Senate Democratic leader's office tells reporters.

Armies have always been vulnerable to epidemic disease.  And in the Middle East, history may be repeating itself.  There have been reports:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is looking for vendors to run its "National Data Warehouse," a database for "capturing, aggregating, and analyzing information" related to beneficiary and customer experiences with Medicare and the federal Obamacare marketplaces. Although the…

President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, spent the first night of the new year at Vintage Cave, an upscale restaurant in Hawaii.