May 2015

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Jonathan V. Last reading his casual essay "The Grass Is Not Greener."

Let’s say that next Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes out with a really handsome non-farm-payrolls report. Something close to 300,000 new jobs and a decline in the unemployment rate by a couple of tenths of a point. How do you suppose the president and his staff would deal with the news? 

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders railed against the NSA and corporate privacy concerns this morning in an apeparance on NBC's Meet the Press.

Vice President President Joe Biden announced the passing of his son, Beau Biden, in a statement released by the White House.

Jeb Bush is underwater in a new poll of likely Republican caucus goers. The poll, which finds Scott Walker leading, was conducted by Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the May 25th issue.

Martin O'Malley is running for president. And even his slogan, "New Leadership," appears to take a shot at his main Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. 

There is an important difference between European and American appetites, in addition to those for fast foods: risk taking. “Investments in Start-Ups Pick Up Pace,” reports the New York Times after surveying the high-tech financing scene here in America. “Europe Struggles to Foster a Startup…

Much has been made of the pending Iraqi offensive to retake Ramadi from ISIS but it may be that Iraq’s principle city is vulnerable.

Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC that "the Clintons will have to answer for the foundation."

Key anti-terrorist programs authorized by the Patriot Act are scheduled to shut down if Congress fails to act by midnight Sunday, but it still remains unclear how the Senate plans to move forward.

Bill Clinton is defending his family foundation. In an email to supporters, the former president is blaming "the political season in America" for criticism of the foundation.

Has NATO become a paper tiger, trying (and failing) to stand up to a resurgent Russian bear? A speech by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday addressed this issue, discussing both the challenges facing the 66-year-old alliance,…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the 2016 presidential race and why Democrats will pay a price for Hillary's early dominance. 

In their review of House Budget Committee chairman Tom Price’s newly released Obamacare alternative, Bloomberg’s editors strain to make a virtue out of Obamacare’s maddening complexity. Whereas no one knows until tax time the following year what, if anything, they will be getting in subsidies under…

One reason to look forward to Friday is that "Ammo Grrrll" always graces us with some "Thoughts From the Ammo Line" over at Power Line.

The Republican National Committee has released a research book attacking Democrat Martin O'Malley. O'Malley is expected to jump in the presidential race tomorrow.

Martin O'Malley is expected to kick-off his presidential campaign tomorrow in Baltimore. But today he's released a tease to get people excited.

In a 41-second video that's set to be released later this morning, the Republican National Committee is using a populist message to hit Hillary Clinton for "hypocrisy."  

President Obama's former top political adviser, David Axelrod, compared Martin O'Malley to Gary Hart in comments this morning on national television:

Days after the indictment of FIFA officials and just a day after the indictment of Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House, Attorney General Loretta Lynch is scheduled to mee with President Barack Obama. The meeting with take place in the Oval Office. 

Former speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, a Republican, has been indicted. The indictment suggests Hastert was paying hush money to for "prior misconduct" to an unnamed person ("Individual A").

Michael Doran, writing for Mosaic: 

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina says the United States is "not making progress" in its fight against ISIS. In a recent interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Fiorina said President Obama "understates the significance of the situation" with the terrorist group that has taken over large…

Florida press is knocking Hillary Clinton for hiding during her visit to the Sunshine State.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the first round of Hillary's hand-picked emails released to the public, and how the media has responded. 

Even before the launch of Obamacare, one of the few things that was clear about the program was that the Bush-appointed HHS inspector general, Daniel Levinson, placed self-preservation above his statutory duty to bring public attention to Obamacare’s waste, fraud and abuse. It is a point I have…

CNN is reporting:

Assuming the WNBA approves, Isiah Thomas will be part owner and coach of the New York Liberty, the women’s team owned by James Dolan, the man who brought the Knicks to their current position in the NBA. Thomas, general manager of the Knicks, was convicted of sexual harassment in 2007. Not to worry.…

One unexplained death. So many negative images. So many pundits talking past real issues. So many obvious problems. 

Is Marco Rubio trolling Hillary Clinton?  

Kate McKinnon, a performer on NBC's Saturday Night Live, says she's "rooting" for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate whom McKinnon portrays. The TV star made the comments in a group interview with other female comedians with the Hollywood Reporter. McKinnon was asked about the…

In a speech today in South Carolina, Hillary Clinton said that all the male presidents get white hair in the White House. But that won't be happening to her, since she colors her hair.

Over the last few years, the gay marriage movement has transformed from "equality for all" to "bake me a cake." As it picks up steam, the movement looks more and more totalitarian, both at home and abroad. Witness the latest news from the Great White North:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was born in Illinois and represented New York in the U.S. Senate, has brought back her Southern accent for her speech today in South Carolina:

Lily Kuo of Defense One writes that:

With so many Republican candidates announcing their bids for the presidency these days, one our most hallowed election-year rituals can’t be far behind. I refer, of course, to when fading musical acts attempt to prove their progressive bona fides by making a stink when a candidate they disagree…

Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Robert E. Rubin co-wrote an article for the June issue of The Atlantic titled (in the print edition), “The Blame Trap,” and subtitled, “Why the U.S. and China need to act on each other’s economic critiques.”

Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator and runner-up for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, will run for president again in 2016. The Associated Press reports:

The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol, featuring Fred Barnes:

Sinan Salaheddin of the AP reports:

Kentucky senator Rand Paul says the "hawks" in the Republican party helped create and grow the Islamic State terrorist group. Paul, who is running for president, appeared Wednesday morning on MSNBC, where host Joe Scarborough asked him about fellow senator Lindsey Graham's own likely White House…

Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Carly Fiorina will both be campaigning in Columbia, South Carolina, on Wednesday, and the Fiorina campaign is making sure reporters know its candidate will be answering questions. Fiorina will be available to speak to the press, says deputy campaign manager…

A reader who wishes not to be named, as he toils behind enemy lines—at a university—emails with a good question. It's about this statement by President Obama in his speech at Adas Israel synagogue last Friday:

Defense One reports:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on the latest in the Middle East, and how Iran's deceptions are playing out.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry has a message for three of the current Republican White House hopefuls: Run for governor before you run for president. Speaking about Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul, all three U.S. senators, Perry said in an interview last week with THE WEEKLY STANDARD that…

Bill Clinton has a secret "pass-through" company named WJC, LLC. WJC, of course, is the former president's initials, William Jefferson Clinton.

The Guardian had a story last week about the soon-to-be completed Abraj Kudai, a new hotel in Mecca which will have 10,000 guest rooms, 70 restaurants, four helipads, and five floors reserved for the sole use of the Saudi royal family.

The speed with which the transgender agenda is moving may end up making the same-sex marriage debate look slow and deliberative by comparison. And now Scholastic, the children's publisher that specializes in distributing and selling books through schools, is poised to bring the issue to a middle…

The BBC reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is saying:

In the initial years following Obamacare’s passage, Republicans remained solidly united on one crucial point:  Obamacare needs to be repealed and replaced, not “fixed.”  But some Republicans and center-right pundits have since decided that trying to fix the president’s signature legislation is a…

"Don’t underestimate me,” warns Bernie Sanders who will, as the AP reports:

At last, a little good news from the academy. Oberlin College has a sense of humor -- or at least its choir does. I don’t know that the subversive (by Oberlin standards!) song they've perormed has a title, but it might well be “Please Don’t Put Me In the Real World.”

The roundtable from the weekend's ABC's This Week, featuring Bill Kristol, Donna Brazile, S.E. Cupp, and Keith Ellison:

While the country slept Friday night and into Saturday morning, the U.S. Senate debated and voted on whether to alter substantially the NSA’s bulk telephone meta-data collection program, extend it for a short period, or simply let it die on June 1 when the “sunset” provision governing the relevant…

Hillary Clinton and her husband, Bill Clinton, made their first joint appearance since the start of the 2016 presidential campaign. The event was a Memorial Day parade in Chappaqua, New York, the location of one of their multi-million dollar homes.

First Lady Michelle Obama spoke today to graduates of Oberlin College. She encouraged the graduating class to "rise above the noise and shape the revolutions of your time."

As I was looking around online Saturday, I happened to come across the text of President Obama's Memorial Day weekend radio address. Here's how it begins:

When thought-smiths have forged on the comfortable anvil of peace the belief that all war and conflict is wicked, foolish, and on the brink of extinction, then pain becomes the meaning of evil and rejecting evil becomes the revolt against pain in all its forms. Civil War veteran Oliver Wendell…

I was once reasonably dignified. I dressed like a gentleman and luxuriated in the cultural heritage of Western civilization. My three places of residence—my home, my office, and my mind—were free of clutter and arranged so as to allow me both to make the most of my days and to begin to venture out…

There was a time when Democrats were free traders and getting trade treaties through Congress was a snap. No more. In the last quarter-century—with most Democrats having slipped into the protectionist camp—winning ratification has become difficult. Today it takes a majority of Republicans to pass a…

Let’s begin by doing something we don’t often do, and that is quoting the New York Times at some length. We do this because David Sanger’s report of Thursday, May 14, makes clear how mistaken are the premises underlying President Obama’s forthcoming Iran deal:

Some treaties put a definitive end to wars and establish an enduring new order among states. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the 30 years of religious warfare that ravaged Europe in the early 17th century, was one of those. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which concluded World War I…

I had coffee at Peet’s with a childhood friend who is plotting a major change in his life. Victor will pull it off. He has done it before. He does not subscribe to the lazy American view that there is something special about having big “dreams.” Every loser has them. But Victor works. In him,…

Puerto Rico is in a financial bind. The Commonwealth, along with its public utilities and various municipalities, collectively owes more than it can realistically repay.

"The deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top,” Hillary Clinton has warned us, and she ought to know. Having been “at the top,” or close enough to it, since 1976, when her husband was elected attorney general of Arkansas at age 30—not the biggest job ever, but one with a whole lot of…

For a fuller account of the surprise Tory victory in Britain’s general election last week, you’ll want to read Ted Bromund’s piece elsewhere in this issue. The Scrapbook, for its part, chooses to believe, eccentrically, that the polls were basically correct until a massive last-minute swing against…

‘Skip the Bag, Save the River.” No, it’s not a line from The Godfather (that would be “Leave the gun, take the cannoli”). Rather, it was the District of Columbia’s motto for a 2009 initiative to clean up the Anacostia River by charging five cents for every plastic bag used by consumers in D.C.…

One Friday evening in 1980, I journeyed to the far West Side of Chicago to a drive-in on Cicero Avenue and attended what may have been the strangest double feature in the history of the world. The top of the bill was The Gong Show Movie, a film written by, directed by, and starring Chuck Barris,…

Father’s Day is still a few weeks away, but it’s not too soon to order the perfect gift for the fathers in your life. We’re referring to the fabulous new book edited by our colleague Jonathan V. Last, The Dadly Virtues: Adventures from the Worst Job You’ll Ever Love (Templeton Press). Not since the…

Saul Bellow died in 2005, a few years after he was accorded full biographical treatment by the critic James Atlas. In 700 pages, Atlas provided a crisply written, fair-minded account of the novelist and fellow Chicagoan up through the publication of his final book, Ravelstein (2000). With some…

The Obama administration put a happy face on its Camp David summit last week, even as four of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s six leaders turned down Obama’s invitation to attend. The most significant absence, of course, was that of Saudi Arabia’s king, Salman. In his place, Riyadh sent Salman’s…

A middle-aged company man on a business trip in 1970s England gets lost miles from the nearest town and, running out of gas near nightfall, takes refuge at a hostel, where things go from weird to worse. 

Some credulous Beltway media sure took the bait last week. Consider:

When guests at a North Korea Freedom Week dinner in Northern Virginia learned the Korean-American pastor at our table led a Maryland church, they immediately asked about the situation in Baltimore. It was May 1, and National Guard troops had been deployed to the city three days earlier to help…

London

The most famous improvised lines in the history of the movies are the ones Orson Welles came up with while playing Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949): “In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and…

Victorino Matus reviews The Dorito Effect in the Wall Street Journal:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with David Bahr reading his casual essay "Among Fans."

From Beijing to London to Washington to other points on the map of this globalized economy, “inequality” has become a hot topic. China has its own methods of handling those the regime’s leaders feel have engaged in excessively conspicuous consumption. But show trials and re-education are tools not…

President Obama is thankful the trade deal has passed the Senate. And he wants the House to "follow suit."

Speaker of the House John Boehner is praising the Senate's passage of the trade bill and calling on Democrats to join with Republicans to pass the law in the House.

Among the emails released by the State Department today was one sent by Hillary Clinton to Jake Sullivan on April 8, 2011. Clinton was forwarding a private intelligence report that Sidney Blumenthal had sent her with the subject line: "UK game playing; new rebel strategists; Egypt moves in."

Hillary Clinton was forwarded an article a month after the terrorist attack on Benghazi that killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens that quoted Stevens's father. In the October 14, 2012, Bloomberg article, Jan Stevens, the late ambassador's father, was quoted saying that it would be "abhorrent" to…

Oklahoma City

Speaking today at a Washington, D.C. synagogue, President Obama called himself an "honorary member of the tribe."

Hillary Clinton misstated her location at a campaign event today in New Hampshire. Instead of saying New Hampshire, the presidential candidate said, "Here in Washington."

Republican members of the House intelligence committee say the Obama administration should release more of the one million-plus documents found after the 2011 raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

In a letter released Thursday, Senator Pat Toomey strongly criticized President Obama's decision to ban or restrict the provision of some equipment to local law enforcement agencies by the federal government. 

Jonathan Last and Steve Hayes joined Kennedy on Fox Business to talk The Dadly Virtues: Adventures from the Worst Job You'll Ever Love:

Michelle Jamrisko at Bloomberg writes:

Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania is calling on President Obama to reconsider his decision to restrict "lifesaving federal equipment" from local law enforcement officials.

Oklahoma City

Oklahoma City

They are a lousy team with perhaps the worst owner in all of professional sports, but the Imperial City wants the Redskins nonetheless.  As Alex Gold and Ted Gayer of the Brookings Institute write:

America Rising has run the numbers on the newly released Hillary Clinton emails. According to the Republican-aligned firm, Clinton received 24 emails from Sidney Blumenthal. 

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz had a simple question to a reporter who asked whether he had a "personal animus against gay Americans."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the scrambling Democrats struggling to answer important questions leading into the 2016 cycle.

In remarks today on Capitol Hill, Speaker of House John Boehner called for action in Iraq:

Even as it becomes ever more clear that last week’s Amtrak horror in Philadelphia had nothing to do with, as the refrain goes, “America’s Failing Infrastructure,™” many in the media and lobbying spheres have continued to demand greater spending on rail. As part of that campaign, this week, a New…

Bill Kristol, writing in USA Today:

A small batch of newly released Hillary Clinton emails show that the then-secretary of state was exchanging sensitive information on her home brew server.

Megan R. Wilson, writes at The Hill, that:

Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said President Obama is "not providing the resources" to defeat the Islamic State in and that United States ought to send "a few thousand more" troops into Iraq to combat the terrorist group in that country.

Susan Rice, speaking at the German embassy, on Tuesday night:

The Hillary Clinton campaign announced the hiring of Lorella Praeli to head Latino outreach. But it's the candidate, Hillary Clinton, who may have some explaining to do.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the Hillary campaign and the trouble she's running into with the Washington press.

On Wednesday afternoon Kentucky senator Rand Paul, a Republican presidential candidate, began what he's calling a filibuster of the Senate's renewal of the PATRIOT Act. Here's a tweet from Paul announcing the speech:

As former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley emerges as perhaps the most significant threat to Hillary Clinton in her quest for the Democratic nomination for president, the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation may be trying to downplay O'Malley's connections to the organization. At the…

The U.S. government released Wednesday morning an additional 86 documents from the vast collection of documents captured during the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The new disclosures bring the total number of documents released to 120 – a tiny fraction of the more…

The White House has released video of First Lady Michelle Obama working out. The video is meant to encourage others to exercise. 

Clinton Foundation staffer Sid Blumenthal has been subpoenaed by the House Benghazi committee, Reuters reports:

In a video played this morning on MSNBC, Iowa Democrats were not able to name an accomplishment of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential frontrunner. Watch here:

A number of social conservatives who met privately with Scott Walker on Tuesday say that they came away from the meeting reassured about the Wisconsin governor's committment to the issues they care about most. "He was well-received in a pretty packed room," says Tom McClusky of March for Life…

A bipartisan group of members of Congress is pushing a law that would stop the requirment for gun buys to disclose race and ethnicity. The effort is being led by Senators Roy Blunt, Mike Enzi, and Joe Manchin, a Democrat.

Disclosure forms filed with the Federal Election Commission by Hillary Clinton provide fascinating details of the remarkable money-making machine that is the once-and-possibly-future first couple. Between January 2014 and the filing of the forms on May 15, 2015 (up to and including a speech by Bill…

Nick Corasaniti, of the New York Times, writes that:

President Obama wants Congress to send the trade bill to his desk. Right away.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on the latest in Hillaryworld and the Clintons' "many, many old friends."

Get ready for Father's Day with The Dadly Virtues: Adventures from the Worst Job You'll Ever Love, the new book from Jonathan V. Last, featuring contributions from Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Graham, Matt Labash, P. J. O'Rourke, Stephen F. Hayes, Joseph Epstein,…

After an event in Iowa on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton responded to a report from the New York Times that an old aide to President Bill Clinton and family friend, Sidney Blumenthal, may have inappropriately advised Clinton when she served as Secretary of State.

Ed Henry of Fox News dared to ask Hillary Clinton a question at an event today in Iowa.

Congressman Adam Schiff won't be running for California's open Senate seat in 2016. But the Los Angeles-area Democrat says someone from his part of the state should offer a challenge to Kamala Harris, the attorney general from the Bay Area and the perceived leading candidate in the race to replace…

“Islamophobia,” which carries with it implications of viciousness, pain, and disease, is not considered a neutral term, either by Muslims who accuse others of it (including some moderate believers in Islam), or by those who supposedly spread it. “Islamophobia” suggests deliberate, if not deranged,…

On Monday, Senator Rand Paul told CBS radio host Dom Giordano that if he were the Republican nominee for president he would attack Hillary Clinton on crime. “I’ll ask Hillary Clinton, what have you done for criminal justice? Your husband passed all the laws that put a generation of black men in…

Hillary Clinton had a very bad day. 

In the New York Review of Books, Ahmed Rashid writes of a recent episode in which:

Last week, I noted that Harvard's Robert Putnam had made a rather baffling and slanderous statement about American Christians. As an empirical matter, it was utterly indefensible and not the kind of untrue generalization you would expect a prominent social scientist to indulge in. So, that was…

Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post captures the sorrows of Baltimore with this striking datum:

Over the weekend, Vox published an article headlined "Hillary Clinton personally took money from companies that sought to influence her." Given Vox's overwhelmingly liberal audience and the astounding lengths the publication's top editors will go to defend liberal politicians, the fact they're…

Late last week, hundreds of dedicated WEEKLY STANDARD readers flocked to Colorado Springs to attend the magazine's yearly summit at the Broadmoor resort.

In a speech today in South Korea, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Internet "needs rules to be able to flourish and work properly." This, according to Kerry, is necessary even for "a technology founded on freedom."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the TWS Summit at the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and who fared well (Rubio, Walker) and who didn't (Kasich, Cruz) in the summit's straw poll.

Bobby Jindal is forming a 2016 presidential exploratory committee. The Louisiana governor made the announcement in a press release from advisor Timmy Teepell.

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker said America should focus on the current challenges and problems faced in Iraq. Speaking on CBS's Face the Nation, Walker responded to a question from Bob Schieffer about potential 2016 rival Jeb Bush's difficult time answering questions about the 2003 invasion of…

Since announcing his candidacy for the president last month, Florida senator Marco Rubio has surged in the polls for the Republican nomination. He's now tied with Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and trails former Florida governor Jeb Bush by two points in the Real Clear Politics average of polls.…

John Kerry is hoping to offer North Korea "a more legitimate entry road to the global community and to the norms of international behavior." The example the secretary of state has for the rogue regime? Iran.

A DoD News story, published on Defense.gov, claims that the "Strategy to Defeat ISIL is Working, Military Official Says."

New York City police chief Bill Bratton is worried about ISIS. So worried, in fact, that he's going to assign 450 New York Police Department cops to fight terrororism that may come from the Islamic State.

The sign was clear, in English, and made an entirely reasonable request: “Please don’t walk through the mass grave.”

In explaining the process of design to an audience at Harvard, Charles Eames once resorted to parable. In India, he explained, people of the lowest caste would eat off banana leaves. People a bit higher up the social scale would eat off a ceramic dish whose shape was inspired by the banana leaf.…

With hundreds of miles of shoreline and the world’s leading Navy and Coast Guard, the United States is the globe’s most logical stable exporter of energy. Too bad Congress effectively banned exports a generation ago. Lifting the ban won’t be enough to displace the Venezuelas and Irans of the…

It took me six hours to destroy it all, that cold, wet winter day. Freezing rain coating the leafless trees and the slush of snow left from the previous days’ storms. A weak fire in one of the stingy, grudging little fireplaces they used to build in Manhattan apartments. And me, alone with…

Offering an opinion of Avengers: Age of Ultron is like reviewing Chex Mix. According to what stand-ard should one judge this mixture of breakfast cereal and pretzels and croutons and salt? Even if you find it bland or uninteresting you’ll probably have a few handfuls anyway. And if you love it, you…

No phrase in modern journalism is more suspicious than “studies show,” unless it’s “research reveals.” Mention “science” and the average scribbler’s eyes grow gauzy as his brain shuts down, and too many readers have the same reaction. This is especially true when the science involved is of the…

Conservatives have been disappointed with the track record of Republicans in Congress since their 2010 takeover of the House. There have been a few bright spots—the cuts in domestic discretionary spending brought about by the sequester, for instance—but from Obamacare to Iran to taxes to financial…

The Weekly Standard has a full-time position available for a web producer with editorial skills and -social media expertise. Duties will include assisting the online staff with editorial and production tasks across a variety of digital and social media platforms.

I found an error in Ted Gioia’s new history of love songs. It’s late in this 336-page book, when he mentions that Simon and Garfunkel gave their 1968 hit “Mrs. Robinson” to the movie soundtrack for The Graduate. As it happens, the adulterous Mrs. Robinson was first a character in the 1967 movie,…

In Ivanhoe, Prince John is thoroughly repugnant, displaying “a dissolute audacity, mingled with extreme haughtiness and indifference to the feelings of others,” as well as a “libertine disposition.” According to Stephen Church, Walter Scott’s character is “almost wholly a later concoction”—except,…

In the debate about what needs to be done to make university education more coherent and more effective, no figure is cited more frequently than John Henry Newman, whose classic study The Idea of a University (1873) tackles educational questions that still exercise would-be reformers. Some of those…

What does it mean to create a work deemed so deleterious to anyone who might encounter it that one’s friends, collaborators, and even a trusted spouse attempt to keep it secret from the world at large? 

Last week, Pope Francis hosted a Vatican summit on global warming where one of his cardinals called for a “full conversion of hearts and minds” to the fight against the “almost unfathomable” effects of fossil fuels on the environment. The pope will soon issue an encyclical on the subject,…

In the spring of 2011, I ditched the academic conference that had brought me to Washington and took the Metro to the Library of Congress. With apologies to the Lincoln Memorial, the library’s Thomas Jefferson Building is surely the most beautiful structure in that great city: a marvel of Italianate…

"For months I’d been seeking a way into my first book, a memoir about returning to New York City after a six-month stay alone in a cabin in the woods of Canada. And there .  .  .  ” (Charles Siebert, New York Times Magazine, May 13).

Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan has an unusual decoration on the wall of his Capitol Hill office: a framed Laffer curve. This totem of supply-siders everywhere is drawn on a napkin and signed by the economist Art Laffer himself. “To my friend, Paul Ryan,” reads the note. 

It’s an especially tense time for the Baltic states and Russia’s other Western-leaning neighbors. Wariness with regard to Vladimir Putin and long-term Russian intentions toward the “near abroad” has long been the norm here, well before the 2007 cyberattack on Estonia and Russian military action…

It's been a full week since The Scrapbook inveighed against the assault on free speech, so we have a new parade of horribles to shake our head at. The precipitating event this time was the killing of two armed assailants at an event in Garland, Texas, that was displaying Muhammad cartoons. It…

John Forbes Kerry is the 68th secretary of state of the United States of America. If you’re ever tempted to ponder American decline, or for that matter the decline of the West, you might pause to reflect that John Kerry was preceded in his august office by, among others, Thomas Jefferson, James…

Our virtues lose themselves in selfishness as rivers are lost in the sea.  —La Rochefoucauld If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in 2016 she will not only be the nation’s first woman president but our second affirmative-action president. By affirmative-action president I mean that she, like…

The most notable exchange during the argument last month in the same-sex marriage case before the Supreme Court, Obergefell v. Hodges, likely occurred between Justice Samuel Alito and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. 

At the top of our next president’s task list will be rescuing American foreign policy from the wreckage of the Obama years. The prevailing headlines detail a grim litany of new threats, each one emanating from an Obama administration policy failure. From the expansionist barbarity of the Islamic…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the May 18th issue.

If anyone needs further evidence of why the news agencies often can’t be trusted to report accurately on Israel and the Palestinians, and why major news outlets such as the New York Times and the BBC should stop repeating agency copy without verifying it, here is an important example from this…

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that President Obama "has done an excellent job" on the trade bill. "We'll pass it later this week," McConnell assured Stephanopoulos .

President Obama's former top political adviser, David Axelrod, says that "It would be a terrible mistake" for Hillary Clinton not to take questions from the press. Axelrod also once worked for the Clintons.

The U.S. killed an ISIS leader, Abu Sayyaf, last night in Syria. And, U.S. forces, now have his wife, Umm Sayyaf, in custody. The news was released today by the White House's National Security Council.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the May 11th issue.

Lower gasoline prices continue to stuff consumers’ wallets and purses with an extra $100 billion annually. So better rush to the stores early, clutching your must-have or merely-want shopping lists to beat the crush. Don’t bother. That cash is staying in consumers’ pockets or bank accounts, or…

President Obama has reported less than $1,001 in his savings account. The disclosure comes as part of the president's annual Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report.

In response to the death penalty granted to the Boston bomber, Martin O'Malley, a likely Democratic presidential candidate, has reiterated his opposition to the death penalty.

Peter Jacobs of Business Insider reports:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has a full-time position available for a web producer with editorial skills and social media expertise. Duties will include assisting the online staff with editorial and production tasks across a variety of digital and social media platforms.

Alex Rodriguez hit his eight homerun. 653 more and he will pass Willie Mays for third most non-steroid-propelled homers, and earn a $6 million bonus from the Yankees. Tom Brady refused to turn over his cell phone and email records to the team investigating his possible involvement in deflating…

Schoolchildren visited the White House this week for the latest installment of the administration's "Every Kid in a Park" initiative. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell joined the fun, tweeting some pictures along with the program's basic mission: "to help more kids experience nature, outdoors ...…

This week, I've been reading Kirsten Powers' new book The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech. And it's fantastic.

B.B. King, born Riley B. King and also called the Beale Street Blues Boy and the King of the Blues, has died at the age of 89. Earlier this month, he announced he was in hospice care due to complications from diabetes. (Nearly 15 years ago, B.B. had become a paid spokesman for a blood glucose test…

Even as it has become increasingly clear that the Amtrak horror in Philadelphia was caused by faulty driving rather than – say it with me – “America’s crumbling infrastructure,” the media have lit up with calls for increased federal spending on rail. In doing so, they frequently repair to our…

DHS chief Jeh Johnson agreed with Chuck Todd that drones could make protecting 2016 presidential candidates more difficult. And, Johnson said as an example, he was a giving a speech recently when he looked up to see "a little drone flying over my head."

Reuters reports that:

After being accused of being sexist for calling Senator Elizabeth Warren her first name, President Obama is not backing down. He's still calling her Elizabeth.

Speaking at a press conference at Camp David, President Obama said that he'd "welcome an Iran that plays a responsible role in the region." Watch here:

Martin O'Malley's team is teasing supporters in the lead up to an announcement about whether he will run for president of the Untied States. The opening line of an afternoon email to supporters reads, "Is he in or is he out? Will he run or won’t he?"

A liberal political action group has produced an ad and fundraising campaign that claims "Republican cuts" to infrastructure spending and Amtrak funding have "killed again." The Agenda Project Action Fund, which has been behind such campaigns as the ad featuring a Paul Ryan look-alike pushing an…

Earlier this week, Harvard professor Robert Putnam did a Q&A with Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein, headlined "Have faith groups been too absent in the fight on poverty?" Here is Putnam's answer to that question:

Lisa Rein and Emily Wax-Thibodeaux of the Washington Post report:

Quick: When was the last time Hillary Clinton had a "good" week? I don't remember either.

For Jeb Bush and the issue of the Iraq War, the third time was the charm—but you wouldn’t know that from reading the headlines. Bush, the former Florida governor and brother of the president who took American troops into Iraq in 2003, had a difficult time explaining his position on the war this…

Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter says officials now believe all passengers on the deadly Amtrak train have now been accounted for:

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton has decided not to run for president of the United States.

The clamor for “trigger warnings” has, predictably, spread to the Classics. This isn’t particularly surprising: From Herodotus to Livy to Tacitus, the body of literature that used to be called the Canon is chock-full of violence, sadism, and what would now be considered racism.

Hillary Clinton has a big supporter: Beyonce. The singer attended a Clinton fundraiser last night in New York City.

Senator Tom Cotton took to the Senate floor to discuss new reports of sarin gas being used in Syria:

In his first TV of his reelection campaign, Senator Mark Kirk is highlighting his long-fight after having a stroke a couple years ago:

Barack Obama greeted Crown Prince Bin Nayef of Saudi Arabia in the Oval Office yesterday by getting some names wrong. Here's how the president began the remarks:

Assuming a Republican wins the presidency in 2016, his top domestic priority will be—and should be—to repeal and replace Obamacare. The health care overhaul is the cornerstone of President Obama’s project to transform America into a top-down administrative state. The effects of repealing Obamacare,…

The New York Times reports that:

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough pounded President Obama for criticizing Fox News at a poverty summit. Watch here:

The Amtrak engineer at the helm of the crashed train has refused to talk to police or to provide a statement to authorities. The Associated Press reports, burying the lede in the final paragraph of the newswire's story:

The House of Representatives will vote today on a bill that would ban abortion after the fifth month of pregnancy, when science indicates that infants can feel pain and survive long-term if born prematurely.

The Republican field for president is remarkably large, but are there really 36 possible contenders for the nomination? That's how many options a new online straw poll from the Republican National Committee offers.

The House of Represenatives will vote today on a bill that would ban abortion after the fifth month of pregnancy, when science indicates that infants can feel pain and survive long-term if born prematurely.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on Hillary Clinton's presidential shadow campaign.

After last night's fatal crash of an Amtrak Northeast Regional Train, the publicly supported company's market research and analysis division emailed customers it had invited to take a survey to inform them the survey had been closed.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has stumbled in his effort to answer questions about the wisdom of invading Iraq, given intelligence failures revealed since his brother George W. Bush launched the war in 2003. Members of the media have taken the opportunity to ask other would-be or…

After Senate Democrats went back on their word and killed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal, Elizabeth Warren was upheld as a progressive champion for orchestrating the legicide. While Republicans were miffed about the betrayal, the situation quickly devolved into an ugly…

Liberal pundit Alan Colmes called for the FBI to investigate the Clinton Foundation. He made the comments on Fox News:

First Lady Michelle Obama is trying to rally Democrats around the lame duck president, Barack Obama. "I'm proud to be a Democrat," Mrs. Obama writes in an email to Democrats.

The early Cold War period might be called the Age of the Treaty Organization. The United States, scrambling furiously to respond to the fact that it had become the guarantor of the “Free World,” had discovered a surprising interest in entangling alliances of all sorts and in all parts of the…

As the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign closed the books on its first month of operations, campaign manager Robby Mook emailed supporters with a rather remarkable claim: Hillary Clinton "didn't have a lot of the usual resources that other candidates might have" to launch a campaign. Tellingly, Mook…

New Jersey governor Chris Christie told CNN's Jake Tapper Tuesday that it "wasn't" the right decision to go to war in Iraq, given what we know now about the intelligence failures leading up to the invasion in 2003.

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz told Fox News' Megyn Kelly that knowing what he knows now, he wouldn't have supported going into Iraq. 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Philip Terzian reading Joseph Bottum's casual essay "Burning Fr. Neuhaus’s Diary."

President Obama is trying to rally his supporters around his trade bill. But, as the email subject line suggests, he understands there are many critics of the bill: "I understand the skepticism about this."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer John McCormack on Elizabeth Warren's legislative defeat of the Trade Promotion Authority bill in the Senate earlier today.

Democratic senator Sherrod Brown is subtly accusing President Barack Obama of sexism in his attacks on Senator Elizabeth Warren, also a Democrat. 

A Democratic Senate candidate from Missouri has argued that politicians in Washington ought to "take on their party bosses," even as he raises money in Las Vegas with the leader of his party in the Senate, Nevada's Harry Reid.

There have been a slew of stories about how Bill Clinton will be taking a back seat in Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Even the former president told Town & Country he'd be "backstage" in his wife presidential campaign.

David Axelrod has some advice for Hillary Clinton: stop doing what you're doing. Of course, Axelrod, a political professional, put it a little more gently today in an interview with CNN.

Reza Najafi, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), used his speech this month at the 2015 Review Conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to lecture the West on its behavior and “remind” states of the importance of eliminating nuclear weapons. Speaking…

Barack Obama says part of the problem with continued poverty in America is misplaced middle-class resentment of the poor, fueled by false media narratives. The president made his remarks at a summit on poverty Tuesday afternoon at Georgetown University in Washington.

The conventional wisdom is that he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance--and maybe that's true. But Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign does have some people looking over their shoulders.  Those people would be, as Kevin Cirilli of The Hill reports, the big bankers who are, in Sanders’ world view,…

Senator Elizabeth Warren is tough on President Obama’s ambitious trade deal and the White House doesn’t like it. Mouthpiece in Chief, Josh Earnest calls her out for “false criticism,” as reported by Jordan Fabian at The Hill.

Frank Holmes, the CEO of U.S. Global Investors, was grilled on CNBC about his donations to the Clinton Foundation and his alleged part of the uranium scandal:

It's been a month since Hillary Clinton officially announced that she was running for president. On April 12, Hillary launched her presidential campaign by releasing a video--and then going into hiding as she road-tripped half-way across the country.

Pat Toomey is considered one of the more vulnerable senators up for reelection in 2016, but one new poll finds the Pennsylvania Republican leading possible Democratic challengers. A new survey from Harper Polling, a GOP firm, finds Toomey ahead by double-digits against three Democrats considering a…

It was a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away: In July 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama made big, bold news by travelling to Berlin to – as The New York Times triumphantly recorded – “restore the world’s faith in strong American leadership and idealism.” With 200,000 Berliners waving…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on the week that was in 2016 GOP presidential politics.

Former President Bill Clinton has got to pay those bills. That's why he's giving a speech this week in Atlanta at the American Institute of Architects meeting in Atlanta. 

In her first week as a candidate for president, Carly Fiorina’s TV schedule alone has been dizzyingly prolific. Since announcing her run on May 4th, Fiorina has done the following: two interviews on ABC’s Good Morning America; two Fox News interviews, one in the morning and another in primetime; a…

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposed a debate between his wife and the spouse of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in an interview today on MSNBC:

The latest episode of Conversations Will Bill Kristol, featuring Harvey Mansfield on Leo Strauss:

In his commencement address at Liberty University on Saturday, Jeb Bush delivered a vigorous defense of religious liberty. But, as Peter Wehner and Mollie Hemingway observe, perhaps the most interesting part of the speech was Bush's lengthy intellectual defense of Christianity itself in which the…

Bloomberg's Phil Mattingly explained this morning that Hillary Clinton is slipping in the polls just as Martin O'Malley is likely to jump in the presidential race.

The crusade against public tobacco use has long been predicated on protecting people from “secondhand smoke.” Sparing non-smokers from tobacco fiends’ cariogenic emissions was the logic that compelled cities from Paris to New York to even Richmond, Virginia (home of Phillip Morris!) to kick smokers…

Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Vladimir Putin in Sochi, the State Department announced today. They are expected to discuss Iran, Syria, and Ukraine. 

Hillary Clinton's brother Tony used his sister's family foundation to make deals. He admit to this fact in legal documents uncovered by the New York Times.

In his latest column expounding the themes of his new book, David Brooks reflects on how naked our public square has become. "As late as 50 years ago," he writes, "Americans could consult lofty authority figures to help them answer" the timeless questions of right and wrong, good and evil. But "all…

There’s a small group of potential Republican presidential candidates you don’t hear much about, though they speak at events along with better-known candidates. They don’t have exploratory committees or campaign staffs. They’re one-man bands. But what they do have are impressive records. This group…

In the coming weeks, President Obama may announce his support for—or at least his non-objection to—a U.N. Security Council resolution defining the terms of a Palestinian state. This would represent an unprecedented break with Israel and mark the culmination of the Obama administration’s six years…

In January 2013, Rachel Cryer and her mother walked into Sweet Cakes By Melissa, a bakery in Gresham, Oregon, and tried to order a wedding cake. Aaron Klein, the co-owner (and Melissa’s husband), was informed Cryer would be marrying another woman. He apologized and told them that providing a cake…

When Hillary Clinton first ran for president eight years ago, it was not hard to anticipate problems inherent in the Clintons’ wielding political power while also accepting foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation. “If Hillary became president,” one prominent Democrat observed, “I think…

In high courts across America, judges are rendering their spring-term decisions. And in Ohio, the City of Cleveland has tacked another loss onto its growing pile of collective losses.

Senator Rand Paul has entered the presidential sweepstakes as a Tea Party favorite and limited-government constitutionalist—i.e., one who believes Congress should not pass legislation unless it has the constitutional authority to do so.

This year is the centenary of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and the occasion for revisiting that momentous discovery by paying tribute to one of the most famous scientists of modern times. Steven Gimbel’s brief book is a welcome contribution to that event, placing Einstein in his…

As federal, state, and local governments continue to expand their laws and regulations regarding gender identity, conflicts over religious objections are sure to grow. Judging by an item on the website of the Department of Health and Human Services, one flash point could well be foster parenting.

As Clinton scandals continue to mount and her credibility plummets, gleeful Republicans are quietly discussing what once seemed impossible: Hillary Clinton might not survive primary season, let alone make it all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue.

There are several key shots in movies—the visual strategies directors and cinematographers and editors use to establish scene, mood, movement, and dramatic tension, guiding the viewer’s eye to important information. 

Iran is on the march all over the world, from Syria and Iraq to Venezuela and Cuba (where they have a Hezbollah base). Except when they unceremoniously retreat, as in recent days when their flotilla to Yemen turned around when they saw the U.S. Navy. 

‘Why does the United States fight terror in Syria, Iraq, and Africa but not in Libya?” Idris al Magreibi, 40, a tall, lightly bearded member of Libya’s House of Representatives in Tobruk, was pacing the floor in the offices of the Libyan Mission to the United Nations as he raised the question. He…

A bit more on the PEN/Charlie Hebdo backlash before we call it a day. Whenever a handful of writers are unhappy, a manifesto can’t be far behind. And sure enough, the withdrawal of a few worthies as hosts of the PEN dinner honoring Charlie Hebdo quickly led to a sententious “statement,” circulated…

Don’t laugh. The news we are about to report is real, and it’s a tragedy: “Tattooed wrists can prevent the Apple Watch’s heart rate sensor from functioning properly, according to some customers. Since the Apple Watch uses your heart rate to determine whether you’re wearing it, you might not be able…

A few weeks ago, The Scrapbook took note of cartoonist Garry Trudeau’s excoriation of the eight Charlie Hebdo journalists shot and killed in Paris last January by Islamist fanatics. The satirist Trudeau, of Doonesbury fame, had just been handed the George Polk Award for “career achievement” and…

Since 1945, the top echelon of German literature has been dominated by a cadre of writers and critics who were children when Hitler came to power and on the brink of adulthood when the war was over. After two years in limbo, it fell to them, as members of the fabled literary Group 47, to restore…

It may be counterintuitive to imagine cheers for a conservative midwestern Republican senator from Democratic partisans, but during the early years of the Cold War, Arthur H. Vandenberg routinely received such accolades. Breaking with the isolationist right of his own party, the Michigan senator…

Two decades ago, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam lamented that we “bowl alone.” This week, two teams played baseball alone.

French soldiers near the Belgian village of Langemark, in what was to become known as the “Ypres Salient,” did not know what to make of the green, earth-hugging cloud that came rolling toward them from the German trench line. Earlier, the enemy artillery had ceased, and things had gone quiet for a…

Moving to the suburbs is usually discussed either in the quiet tones of moral caution or with gallows humor. For me, the experience was a glorious fulfillment. Twelve years of apartment living had convinced me that you ain’t no kind of man unless you have stairs. But I wanted more than just the…

The American system of market-based capitalism is in trouble. And the reasons are not the ones commonly cited. The trouble is not that the financial system came close to collapse in the fall of 2008: We have experienced panics before, and the ability of the political and regulatory authorities to…

The short plane ride from Kathmandu to Lukla, through the front range of the Himalayas, is famous not just for scenery but for thrills. The tricky part is landing, at which the pilot gets one shot: Skim over a pass, bank, and drop sharply onto a short runway sloped upward at nearly 10 degrees to…

What to do about Tom Brady? The consensus among the sports class seems to be that something must be done. You even hear people saying that he should be suspended for an entire season.  Kieth Olbermann of ESPN did a rant recommending just such a punishment. (One day for the crime and 364 for the…

Seventy-five years ago today, on May 10, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Holland and Belgium. Conservative prime minister Neville Chamberlain was rebuffed by Labour in his request to join him in a National Government, and at 6 pm, King George VI asked Winston Churchill to form a government. Churchill…

Hillary Clinton wants you to wish her a Happy Mother's Day -- and maybe send a few dollars her way, as well. Often, organizations that support politicians or candidates (such as the Democrat or Republican National Committees) will solicit such greetings for holidays and special occasions. But in…

In an editorial for the new issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Bill Kristol notes the "ludicrous" "guarantee" Secretary of State John Kerry made last week regarding Iran's so-called breakout capacity towards nuclear weapons. Kerry told Israelis:

Brassica oleracea acephala: "A hardy cabbage with curled often finely incised leaves that do not form a dense head," according to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. It was, writes Alan Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food, "the ordinary greenstuff of country people in most parts of Europe…

Prices matter. They are the economists’ canary in the coal mine, an indicator of what is to come. Not necessarily as grim an indicator as when we have here a dead canary, but a pointer that cannot be ignored. When oil prices plummeted, analysts paid attention, hunting for causes and effects. Wages…

St. John’s College, one of the few remaining schools devoted to providing a liberal arts education through the careful study of the “Great Books,” is close to having uploaded all of the back issues of its famed academic journal, The St. John’s Review.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has a full-time position available for a web producer with editorial skills and social media expertise. Duties will include assisting the online staff with editorial and production tasks across a variety of digital and social media platforms.

There's still a lot we don't know about what happened in Garland, Texas, earlier this week, including the name of the heroic police officer who averted certain disaster by outshooting two heavily armed terrorists. But blogger Bob Owens, who generally knows his stuff when it comes to firearms, has…

As part of the observance of the 70th anniversary of VE Day, the National Mall played host to a WWII sky parade.

On Syria:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the week that was in Washington, London, and around the world.

Our contestants for most depressing story of April 2015 so far include Iran, Baltimore, and the nothing-to-see-here media response to a likely jihadist shooting in suburban Texas. But there is worse out there, so let's look behind door number four.

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

Friday morning, David Cameron returned to Downing Street as Britain's prime minister. After a campaign of unsurpassed tedium, the General Election came alive last night with the first exit poll, and a Conservative victory out of nowhere. For weeks, the incumbent Conservatives and the Labour…

Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute and a liberal professor at Columbia University, explained this morning on Morning Joe what's wrong with the Clinton Foundation:

The House of Representatives will vote on a bill next week that would ban nearly all late-term abortions, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The legislation would establish a national limit on abortion at 20 weeks after conception—five months into pregnancy—which is the…

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a smart op-ed about the Garland attack by former federal prosecutor George Parry. He points out the left’s agonized reaction to Garland—We’re for free speech! But these people using free speech are horrible and hateful!

Rural Alaska is well known for its wolves, bears, and moose, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set its sights on a considerably smaller creature: the bed bug. The EPA is prepared to award a grant of up to $100,000 to help Alaska Native Village communities to right bed bug…

So it appears that Tom Brady did know that he was throwing softballs. As John Branch of the New York Times reports

The first thing you see upon entering the new National Archives exhibit "Spirited Republic: Alcohol in American History" is a column containing 26 gallon-jugs filled with pure alcohol, each with varying amounts and representing our annual consumption over the centuries. And while it might sound…

The ice is finally melting. Not the Arctic ice, although that might be melting too. I mean the frozen position critics of the global warming hysterics have been taking. They disagree with Obama’s contention that the science of climate change is settled, and prefer reading actual temperatures…

The first use of poison gas in war occurred on April 22, 1915 and the one hundredth anniversary of that grim event was widely noted and commented upon.  Including here.

Bradford West, United Kingdom

Pamela Geller, the woman targeted by terrorists in Texas over the weekend, says the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have yet to contact her after the thwarted attacked. She made the comments last night in an interview with Sean Hannity.

Friday marks the seventieth anniversary of Victory in Europe, or V-E, Day, when the Allies accepted Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender after six long years of war. No one should have savored that day in 1945 more than Winston Churchill, the wartime British prime minister. Yet he was to a…

A few days after the Floyd Mayweather versus Manny Pacquiao fight, the reviews are still coming in, and most are negative. Perhaps the harshest assessment is a class action suit filed against Pacquiao by boxing fans who are angry that the Filipino southpaw fought with an injured right shoulder and…

Max Boot, writing for Commentary:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on who he thinks the "Big Three" GOP Presidential nominees are.

Last week, the Israeli Air Force struck a cache of long-range missiles belonging to Hezbollah and put the Shia militia on notice. As air force chief Major-General Amir Eshel explained, "Our ability today to attack targets on a large scale and with high precision is about 15 times greater than what…

NPR’s “Race Card Project,” a series of stories on the topic of race and society, found another way to make us confront our own latent racism as well as the lingering racism in society this week by telling us the story of a white guy named Jamaal.

In a revealing exchange between ABC's Jon Karl and press secretary Josh Earnest, the White House refused to say whether Hillary Clinton's proposed executive amnesty is legal:

Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican, has written a letter to President Barack Obama regarding the request that Congress "fast-track" legislation on Trade Promotion Authority. Sessions says he has a number of questions Congress should expect answers to before the body agrees to "yield its…

For the better part of a year, Smith College has been telegraphing that it would soon accept transgender student applications. On Monday, the women’s college flung open the curtain on its new admissions policy. And whether it realizes it or not, Smith has inadvertently done a great deal of damage…

At a Clinton Global Initiative event in Marrakesh, former President Bill Clinton was asked why he isn't defending the Clinton Foundation from increased scrutiny. "I just work here," Clinton replied. "I don't know."

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was asked this morning on CNBC how she's different than Jeb Bush. "Everything about me is different," said Fiorina. 

A new Quinnipiac poll of likely Iowa Republican presidential caucusgoers finds Wisconsin's Scott Walker in front of the GOP pack with 21 percent support and a 9-point advantage over his closest primary opponents. That's down from 25 percent and a 12-point lead in Quinnipiac's February poll, but…

The Republican National Committee will release a web video later today that frames the Clintons as out of touch with everyday Americans. Another theme of the Republican ad is that the Clintons are willing to say just about anything, regardless of the facts.

Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and new Republican presidential candidate, appeared on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers Tuesday to talk about her candidacy. Host Seth Meyers brought up the fact that Fiorina had failed to purchase the internet domain carlyfiorina.org before launching…

Early this week, PEN American Center named six new table hosts for its annual dinner on Tuesday, substituting for the six who opted out to protest the organization’s decision to present its “freedom of expression courage award” to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Nonetheless, an…

The United States is offering big pay outs to anyone who has "information" on key ISIS leaders. "The U.S. Department of State's Rewards for Justice Program is offering rewards for information on four key leaders of the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The Secretary of…

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) isn't just about hard hats and safer machinery anymore. The federal government agency charged with regulating workplace conditions has formed an "alliance" with a "national social justice advocacy organization for transgender people"…

President Obama’s decision to nominate Marine Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a very good move. It’s also a little bit of a surprise: Even though it’s been clear for a while that Dunford was going to be the last man standing in the…

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a 2008 Republican candidate for president, announced Tuesday he is running for the GOP nomination again in 2016. At an event in his hometown of Hope, Arkansas, Huckabee hit on populist and social conservative themes, repeatedly entreating voters to…

A new ad from the Center for Security Policy says the mullahs are laughing in Tehran about President Obama's concessions to Iran in the nuclear negotiations:

In remarks last night to Democratic donors in New York City, President Obama talked about the "project" he started continuing after he leaves the White House.

Bill Clinton is blaming the Clinton Foundation's accountants for not disclosing the acceptance of foreign donations on tax documents filed with the I.R.S. The former president made the comments in an interview with NBC:

Most of the time the International Trade Commission makes the news -- in these pages, at least -- it’s because of its enforcement of anti-dumping rules that do little but boost the price of items such as steel and sugar for U.S. consumers. However, on Tuesday, the Commission will hold what promises…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on the entrance into the 2016 GOP field of hopefuls by Carly Fiorina and Dr. Ben Carson.

Most American wouldn't know a donkey drop from a paddle scoop, but nevertheless, half a million taxpayer dollars will be going to support a cricket league in Afghanistan. The current grant opportunity looks to  build on what was considered a successful 2014 program. The plan is for at least five…

In the current issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, I have an editorial on the plight of Aaron and Melissa Klein—two Oregonians who used to own a bakery in a Portland suburb, who were run out of business and recently assessed a $135,000 fine for politely declining to provide a cake for a gay wedding. For…

If you went only by the media, you'd think that Rand Paul was a legitimate contender to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Time magazine put him on its cover, calling him "The Most Interesting Man in Politics." Politico magazine said --literally--the same thing. Top Obama aides agree.…

Zaid Al-Alayaa and Nabih Bulos of the Los Angeles Times reports that:

Former neurosurgen Ben Carson says he's "in" the presidential race. Carson announced his run in a TV interview Sunday evening, with a more formal announcement Monday in Detroit, his hometown. Here's Carson announcing the run on Twitter:

Whatever one makes of either one of them, the similarities between Sarah Palin and Carly Fiorina (who’s just announced she’s running for president) stop more or less at the chromosomal level. Fiorina is an accomplished (if controversial) businesswoman; Palin, a half-term governor and television…

Jim Michaels of USA Today reports that:

The first person to appear in Carly Fiorina's video announcing she is officially running for president is Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The 60-second launch video begins with the former first lady and secretary of state's own announcement from last month playing on a TV, before Fiorina uses…

Bill Clinton will continue to deliver lucrative paid speeches, the former president confirmed in an interview with NBC.

Carly Fiorina announce on Good Morning America that, indeed, she is running for president of the United States:

As always, Winston Churchill said it best. Here he is on March 24, 1938, less than two weeks after the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria:

Saint Petersburg from its ground-breaking in 1704; Petrograd from 1914; Leningrad from the arch-demonic founding father’s death in 1924; and St. Petersburg redux, with the hope of civilization restored, in 1991. But the most beautiful and illustrious Russian city is still best known as Leningrad,…

To its immense credit, the perpetually beleaguered Coptic church of Egypt has seen fit to dedicate some resources to the study of its history. The Coptic church and two lay Coptic organizations have organized a series of symposia on Christian history and archaeology in Egypt. The latest of these…

The ideal of a staid, heavily regulated industry that offers blue-collar jobs with respectable wages, pensions, and strong community ties—usually lamented as a thing of the past by observers on both the left (Elizabeth Warren, Paul Krugman) and the right (Pat Buchanan, Rick Santorum)—does still…

Springtime in the Mediterranean: The skies are clear, the waters are calm, and the migrants are drowning. In 2014, the U.S. Border Patrol estimated that 307 people died while being smuggled into the United States from Mexico. So far this year, more than 1,650 people have drowned as they attempted…

Last week, the Obama administration urged Saudi Arabia to halt its air campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who have wrested control of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The White House’s professed concern was that Riyadh’s Operation Decisive Storm was killing too many civilians.…

Now that the presidential race is heating up, we’re getting our quadrennial lesson in the hopeless and perennial nature of media bias. Hillary Clinton is proving to be the most obviously corrupt major presidential candidate since her husband, and before that, you’d probably have to go back to Nixon…

Ashland, N.H.

No one really knows why, in 1928, Andrew Jackson supplanted Grover Cleveland on the $20 bill. It may be because that year was the centennial of Jackson’s election as president. Or perhaps it was because Congress, very much controlled by Republicans at the time, thought that honoring Old Hickory…

Tolstoy’s famous dictum—the second half of it, anyway—that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” certainly applies to the O’Neills, in spades. Though our concern here is with the playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953), the miseries of his father, James, his mother, Mary (known as Ella),…

Police and city officials in the District of Columbia must be downright giddy these days. Over the past year, D.C. drivers exceeded the speed limit on fewer occasions than the year before, meaning they were less likely to get into serious accidents. At least this is what we can extrapolate from the…

I had my first reckoning with big government in a small town in New Jersey. The incident remains startlingly fresh in my mind, although it was years ago. A traffic island on a main road, perhaps 20 feet in length, was being demolished. Perched above the brightly vested construction workers was a…

"You know, I’d really had a nightmare about this, but I didn’t realize they would do it. I didn’t think they would. The kids must be terrified.” So exclaimed Danielle Meitiv of Silver Spring, Maryland, to free-range-parenting godmother Lenore Skenazy. The “they” in this case are the…

Almost exactly 20 years ago, a gawky conservative renegade magazine publisher named Steve Forbes threw his hat in the ring for the 1996 GOP presidential nomination. Forbes’s run was first seen as a joke. But he wound up rocking the Republican establishment by injecting fresh and bold reform ideas…

Hillary Clinton has been an international celebrity for a quarter-century, and since Bill Clinton left office, the two of them have monetized their worldwide renown to a mind-boggling extent. In her last official filing for the State Department, Clinton listed her net worth as between $5 and 

Nashua, N.H.

I have an issue with issue—with the word, that is. It pops up everywhere, meaning everything and meaning nothing. One hears of a pitcher who has rotator-cuff issues, of a landlord who has issues with pets in his buildings, of a bill up before Congress that poses jurisdictional issues. A weather…

Attraction. Pleasure. Attachment. Reproduction. Fulfillment. What is the meaning of sex? The answer lies somewhere in the way we integrate the biological imperatives with the emotional and experiential realities. I’m not going to improve on that answer in the next few pages, but I’ll complicate it…

The Dynasty. The Evil Empire. The Bronx Bombers (and, at times, Zoo). Valued at $2.5 billion. Winner of 18 division titles, 40 American League pennants, and 27 World Series. No sports franchise in America approaches the orbit of the New York Yankees.

While traveling in the west of England recently, I had occasion to dine in an organic restaurant just outside Cirencester. The restaurant was clean and inviting and resolutely wholesome, with a small but equally wholesome grocery off to the side. Everything in the building was radiantly,…

In 1974, Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek criticized those who believed they could measure the real-world impact of economic theories with scientific precision. They were wrong, Hayek said in his Nobel lecture, entitled “The Pretence of Knowledge.” They didn’t have enough solid…

In a memo raising concerns about the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), Alabama senator Jeff Sessions worries that the trade deal would open immigration floodgates.

In an interview with an Israeli media outlet, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry accuses critics of the Iranian nuclear deal hysterical.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the May 4th issue.

The mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, has rescinded the city-wide curfew. The mayor made the announcement on Twitter.

Former Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley said that if he runs for president, he'll launch his campaign in Baltimore:

Eric Costello, Baltimore city councilman for 11th district, wants the city's curfew lifted. And he wants the national media to go home. Costello made his plea in a series of tweets this morning directed straight at the media.

Christopher Caldwell, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

David Keyes, the executive director of Advancing Human Rights, set out to punk the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on his recent trip to New York City. Watch here:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Philip Terzian reading his casual essay "Their Money or Your Life."

Last week’s surprising report that the value of all the goods and services produced in America did not grow in the first quarter, which will be subject to two revisions as firmer data come in, tells us one of two things. Either the American economy has stopped growing, or the GDP figures, which…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the riots in Baltimore.

April turns out to be “Remember-a-Nazi Month.” A 93-year-old Auschwitz guard, a former member of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen-SS unit, is on trial on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder. He says he “morally” shares the guilt for taking cash and belongings from the prisoners as they entered the camp, but…

Ohio governor John Kasich, who may run for the Republican nomination for president, said he is in talks with publisher and conservative activist Steve Forbes to develop a flat tax reform proposal.

Is there anything separating Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush on the question of what to do about the Iran deal? As with many issues, the distinction between the two Florida Republicans falls more in the realm of tone and emphasis than on policy.

A Maryland prosecutor announced charges will be filed against police officers in the death Baltimore man Freddie Gray:

The RickPAC has released video telling the story of Rick Perry and his relationship with Marcus Luttrell:

There are almost no Republican donors teaching at Harvard Law School. Ninety-eight percent of the political donations from faculty go to Democrats. 

The State Department, through the U.S. Mission to India, is offering a $35,000 grant to develop a workshop for "sharing ideas on the role of editorial cartooning in India and the United States in creating public dialogue" with "print and broadcast journalists, bloggers, citizen journalists, and…

First Lady Michelle Obama joked with David Letterman about running for president. watch here: