September 2015

Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel is at it again. In one of their man on the street videos, a staple of the show, a staffer asked random self-identified Clinton supporters about Trump's tax plans.

In a newly released Hillary Clinton email, Clinton jokes that the Chinese must have hacked her email. "Even weirder--I just checked and I do have your state but not your gmail--so how did that happen. Must be the Chinese!"

The Palestinian press has been saying for weeks that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas would “drop a bombshell” when he spoke to the United National General Assembly today. In the event, the bomb did not go off.

In one newly released email from Hillary Clinton, one discovers that John Kerry had Hillary Clinton's personal email address. Note that Kerry, who was then a senator but is now secretary of state, chose who would be in charge of overseeing the State Department's response to document requests…

The Washington Nationals ended the home campaign of their 2015 season on a high-note Monday with Max Scherzer taking a no-hitter into the 8th inning before giving up a single. Manager Matt Williams pulled Scherzer soon after, with the right-hander striking out ten and getting credit for the 5-1 win…

The controversy over Carly Fiorina's comments at the last GOP debate about seeing a video of an aborted fetus with its legs kicking is still raging. Earlier today, David Daleiden, the journalist behind the Center for Medical Progress's undercover Planned Parenthood investigation that produced the…

Since becoming the leading candidate for House speaker, majority leader Kevin McCarthy has been treated with suspicion by some conservative commentators. Sean Hannity is one of them, and in an appearance on Hannity’s Fox News program Tuesday, McCarty faced tough questions from the host about what…

Donald Trump may own some of the nation’s most chichi country clubs – they don’t let just anybody in the Mar-a-Lago! – but his base of political support comes from clubs of a different sort. Ten years after two writers took to these pages to urge Republicans to appeal to people at Sam’s Club rather…

We're two weeks from the first Democratic debate and to be honest with you, I can't tell right now if we are underestimating Hillary Clinton's weakness, or her strength.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton on the situation in Syria, and what Russia is up to.

Worry not about the tens of thousands of Syrians that Barack Obama plans to invite to take up residence here. Secretary of State Kerry assures us that the vetting process to screen out the bad guys will be thorough. Alas, Michael Steinbach, assistant director of counterterrorism of the F.B.I. told…

Remember all the commotion surrounding the first commercials for Viagra? It wasn't just the content per se that had people talking—it was also the voiceover that casually warned you to "call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease in vision or an erection lasting longer than four…

At the beginning of a five-hour committee hearing on Tuesday with Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards as the sole witness, Chairman Jason Chaffetz made a surprising announcement. The Utah congressman and oversight committee chairman said he wouldn't focus on the undercover investigation…

Former Ronald Reagan speechwriter Jeff Bell found a lot to like in Donald Trump's tax plan. 

Today at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, Bill Clinton claimed he tried to be more Chinese by saving money. Watch:

In March, an investigation by ProPublica and Gawker revealed that a “secret spy network” that was not on the State Department payroll, run by longtime Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, was “funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting…

Donald Trump’s newly released tax plan would add a staggering $10 trillion to the national debt over a decade, according to scoring by the Tax Foundation, a well-respected (especially in conservative circles) nonpartisan source.  To put that into perspective, that’s more debt than Barack Obama—by…

President Obama met with Cuban strongman Raul Castro today in New York City. The two discussed improving U.S.-Cuba relations, according to the White House.

Vox's Ezra Klein wrote a good piece of analysis Monday about how unpredictable politics has become. He notes that the four surprising political developments we've seen in the last few months—Speaker of the House John Boehner resigning from Congress, and Scott Walker dropping out of the presidential…

Today, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America Cecile Richards, testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on PPFA's use of taxpayer funding. During testimony, she falsely asserted that, "we've never stated that we did" provide mammograms. 

The Weekly Standard has a full-time position available for a talented individual with reporting and writing experience. Duties will include writing, reporting, and assisting the online staff with editorial and production tasks across a variety of digital platforms. Candidates should send a cover…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Hillary's 2016 candidacy, and why she is weaker than people realize.

In May 2014, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius declared during a joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that "we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos." Late last week, time ran out. Fabius's original remarks were as follows:

Two days after George W. Bush was inaugurated as president in 2001, his brother Jeb sent him a nine-page letter on the subject of yielding federal power in favor of state control.  Jeb Bush was still in his first term as governor of Florida at the time, but he knew the ties between Washington and…

After John Boehner announced he would be resigning as speaker of the House, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he would run to fill his position. Now there's a second congressional leadership race to fill the spot held by McCarthy.

Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke preview their new book, Jack Kemp: The Bleeding Heart Conservative Who Changed America, in today's Wall Street Journal:

Puerto Rico is an economic basket case. It’s been in a recession for nearly a decade, its skilled labor is leaving the island in droves, and the island’s government recently told its bondholders that it is unable to fully repay them. To emphasize that point, it recently failed to meet some bond…

House majority leader Kevin McCarthy officially announced his campaign for speaker of the House. In a letter sent to his fellow Republican congressmen, McCarthy promised that if elected he would lead a House of Representatives that would "have the courage to lead the fight for our conservative…

As with most things American literature, it all begins with Edgar Allan Poe. In 1841, Poe unleashed on an unsuspecting world “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” arguably the world’s first modern detective tale. The end result was a sensational story that coupled outrageous acts of violence (never…

Recent polling by Gallup shows that

Just about every American knows the sheer animal frustration of sitting in traffic. Numerous studies have also pointed to the serious economic toll that traffic jams exact. Less understood, however, are the major problems that congestion on the nation’s inland waterways present.

Bill Kristol talked about John Boehner's resignation and the 2016 presidential race on ABC's This Week:

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley believes the Hillary Clinton email scandal has been bad for the Democratic party. He made the remarks in a CNN interview.

It is often accepted without question that the New England Puritans were hardhearted religious fanatics who took pleasure in publicly humiliating each other and calling down damnation on the heads of heathens. In 1917, H. L. Mencken wrote famously that the Puritan was characterized by his “utter…

The eighties, as the hipsters among us know, are undergoing a revival. The music and fashion of the decade have been disinterred, and its politics too. Where, the pundits of America ask, is our Reagan? Meanwhile in Britain, the Labour party has revived its eighties’ follies by choosing an…

Readers of The Scrapbook may have noticed that a “controversial” American political figure gave a much-publicized speech on a well-known college campus last week. And that while his views were not likely to find favor at that particular institution—indeed, are regarded as anathema by faculty and…

Last month, China devalued its currency, slightly lowering the bottom of the range within which market forces can determine the yuan’s foreign exchange value. The central bank’s announcement triggered severe repercussions in global financial markets—but it was inaccurate and incomplete.

Judging by the number of House and Senate seats, governorships, and state legislative seats it holds, the Republican party is stronger than at any point since the 1920s. Yet, going by the presidential nomination battle alone, the party is a mess. There are too many candidates, a few of whom are…

In his memorable poem “At the Grave of Henry James,” W. H. Auden apostrophized the novelist to make a useful point:

Until mid-September, the half-million migrants who had been marching northwards into central Europe seemed like the Old World equivalent of Hurricane Sandy survivors. Families uprooted by the war in Syria were seeking safety, according to this view of things. It was sad to see little girls sleeping…

Any book about libertarianism is bound to be a book about the United States. The American-born David Boaz admits that his origins will confine The Libertarian Mind, an updated version of his 1997 primer on the philosophy of individual freedom, to this country’s political system. But even if Boaz…

Though I am an Apple user—phone and laptop—and happy with both, the tepid response to the latest Apple dog and pony show left me feeling a bit of schadenfreude. The digital revolution is pushing other technologies into the grave, and like a lot of people, I mourn that—in the way, probably, that an…

The Weekly Standard has a full-time position available for a talented individual with editorial skills, reporting and writing experience, and social media expertise. Duties will include assisting the online staff with editorial and production tasks across a variety of digital platforms. Candidates…

In defending the Iran nuclear deal to Congress, President Obama and his staff argued repeatedly that rejection would leave America in dire isolation at the United Nations. Obama can now relax. Having used slash-and-burn executive tactics to roll right over a dissenting majority in Congress and a…

Some Republican presidential candidate was sure to come along with a credible tax reform plan to erase tax loopholes, preferences, and special breaks, broaden the tax base, and lower rates. Now Jeb Bush has done it. This marks a departure point in the GOP race.

Sticklers will be relieved to know that the New York Times wasted no time in repudiating a gross error that appeared in its pages on September 12. A reporter described the “gaudy décor” at the Beverly Hills Diner, a restaurant in Moscow, as including “human-size figures of Porky the Pig and Marilyn…

Williamstown, Mass.

The Scrapbook is delighted to commend to readers a wonderful new book by our friend and contributing editor Tod Lindberg. The Heroic Heart: Greatness Ancient and Modern explores a topic, Tod writes, that “I have been working on all my life, though not until recently with a view that the problems I…

According to the New York Times, rocks now throw themselves. Or at least that’s what The Scrapbook was forced to conclude upon reading the paper’s curious headline: “Jewish Man Dies as Rocks Pelt His Car in West Bank.” The Times eventually “corrected” this headline, but only after it appeared in…

Earlier this summer, we learned the Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that the intelligence on ISIS was manipulated. Analysts at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, formally complained to the IG that analysis contradicting the Obama administration’s narrative on ISIS was…

Antisemitism has never been an easy subject for America’s foreign-policy establishment. Read through State Department telegrams and Central Intelligence Agency operational and intelligence cables on the Middle East and you will seldom find it discussed, even though Jew-hatred—not just…

Emily Bingham begins the biography of her outrageous great-aunt by explaining, “The surest way to make a child curious about an ancestor is never to discuss her.” Born in 1901 into the powerful Louisville family that owned the Courier-Journal, Henrietta Bingham rejected the genteel life of a…

Even now with the Russians on the verge of combat operations in Syria, the White House still says it believes that they’re there to fight ISIS. John Kerry says that his Russian counterpart told him that the Russians are “only interested in fighting” the Islamic State. Other administration officials…

Disputes between the political appointees who run the Pentagon and the military officers who serve there are not unheard of, but the nastiness and public nature of the fight over women in combat being waged between Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and the Marines who answer to him is unprecedented…

The man had tiny hands. Or, at least, hands that looked tiny on his huge frame. Six foot ten, 275 pounds, and Moses Malone had the hands of a 5′9″ grocery bagger. Embarrassing hands, he seemed to think, stubby and ill-proportioned, and when he was young he would often hide them—tucking them into…

‘Rob: We talked politics, which we both saw fairly eye to eye on.

How big a problem is it that the two leading Republican candidates for president aren’t actually qualified to be president?

It is often said that a little knowledge can go a long way, but I have not found this to be true.

Dear reader, don’t take this personally, but sometimes I think of pursuing another line of work. It’s not you, it’s me. Writing is just so hard. The words don’t seem apt, sentences come loose, a draft seems more deserving of the delete button than your readerly attention. 

An old friend who's worked at high levels of government and politics writes:

Hillary Clinton joined Chuck Todd on Meet The Press Sunday, and he replayed some of her biggest flip-flops on issues like same sex marriage and energy in front of her. Watch:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with David Skinner reading his casual essay "Words Fail Me."

Michelle Obama introduced Bono at an event this evening in New York City. As the first lady introduced the singer-turned-icon, she repeated one of his signature lines: "povery is sexist."

Unlike American presidential doctrines, Russian doctrines tend to go unnoticed by the western media or are often dismissed as propaganda. This is curious, as the Russians, and before this the Soviets, are not known for hyperbole in geopolitics as they are in the ideological arena. For example, the…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the September 28, 2015 issue.

On Monday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, the Republican presidential front-runner on April Fools' Day, quit the contest. There had been no scandal which disgraced him, no momentous mistake which undermined him. It was simply that he once had support from Republican primary voters; he no longer…

Two distinguished politicians, one with a constituency of over one billion souls, the other a constituency of over one billion subjects, visited us this week. The pope’s souls, of course, are voluntary adherents to his cause, with the price of disobedience deferred until the disobedient enter…

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and the head of Apple, Tim Cook, have great seats at tonight's State Dinner featuring Chinese President Xi. According to the White House, the tech leaders are seated with President Obama and President Xi. 

Pope Francis spoke at the United Nations Friday morning and his remarks were, more or less, what was expected: a long push for climate change legislation mixed with concern about the world’s unjust economy. So in general, there wasn’t much to see. But in their particulars, some of the pope’s…

With John Boehner stepping down as House speaker, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy of California looks like the likeliest candidate to replace him. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican, has already said he won’t run and has endorsed McCarthy. Texas congressman Jeb Hensarling could be a dark…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the reason Speaker John Boehner decided to step down..

Never in American history has one party presented 15 serious candidates for a presidential nomination. The Republican party is not doing so today. 

John Boehner will step down as House Speaker on October 30. His announcement was not a total surprise, however, since he’d been expected to leave Congress as early as next year, or even sooner.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on 2016, Jeb Bush, and Carly Fiorina. 

Numerous sources report Speaker John Boehner has announced he will be retiring from his speakership and Congress at the end of October.

On Thursday, Douglas Brinkley, author of "The Nixon Tapes: 1973," joined Neil Cavuto to talk about similarities between Hillary Clinton and President Richard Nixon. 

The Hillary Clinton campaign released a video encouraging women to join her Women for Hillary coalition. But at the 00:20 mark, when a woman's voice says, "this is our country," the screen pans to a woman who appears to be in France.

Something has gotten into Ted Cruz. The Republican senator is known as a conservative firebrand willing to take on his own party, but in a Thursday meeting with reporters in his Capitol Hill office, Cruz was sounding almost ecumenical. Maybe it was the presence of Pope Francis.

Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, issued the following statement following his vote Thursday against a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government: 

Something has gotten into Ted Cruz. The Republican senator is known as a conservative firebrand willing to take on his own party, but in a Thursday meeting with reporters in his Capitol Hill office, Cruz was sounding almost ecumenical. Maybe it was the presence of Pope Francis.

Baseball fans continue to pay their respects to Lawrence Peter Berra, aka “Yogi,” the legendary Yankees catcher, big league manager and coach, and homespun philosopher, who died Tuesday at age 90. “What I really liked about him is that he was such a stand-up guy,” one mourner standing outside the…

Pope Francis spoke to Congress this morning and Ross Douthat had an observation which helps a great deal in understanding the man:

Pope Francis spoke before Congress Thursday, and numerous politicians lived up to their most iconic moments. 

While there have been extensive comparisons of Bernie Sanders to Larry David—and there are undeniable similarities—some are now comparing the Jewish senator and presidential candidate to Pope Francis. 

If you've followed the technology world over the last five years, you know that the three buzziest trends in Silicon Valley have been "social media," "mobile computing," and the "sharing economy."

The first two episodes of the new South Park season remind us why the term "South Park Conservative" exists. The show should also help us narrow down the GOP field to politicians who embody its values.

In the middle of his trip to Washington, D.C., Pope Francis made an "unschedued" stop to meet with members of an group of nuns suing the federal government over the Obama administration's contraception and abortifacient mandate in the health-care law. The Little Sisters of the Poor is an order of…

After his morning visit with President Obama, Pope Francis ambled over to St. Matthew’s Cathedral (which is easily the most beautiful building in Washington) to meet with America’s bishops. 

In his testimony on Capitol Hill Tuesday, former CIA director (ret.) General David Petraeus argued that the Obama administration can and should be doing more in Syria. Petraeus proposed “the establishment of enclaves in Syria protected by coalition air power where a moderate Sunni force could be…

Say this for President Obama: His troll game is strong. During his opening remarks welcoming Pope Francis, he abandoned his “freedom to worship” language and instead said: “People are only free when they can practice their faith freely.” And that, “We in the United States cherish our religious…

When running for Senate in 2012, Democrat Heidi Heitkamp portrayed herself as something of a moderate on the issue of abortion, saying: "I do not support public funding of abortions, and believe that late term abortions should be illegal except when necessary to save the life of the mother."

When running for Senate in 2012, Democrat Heidi Heitkamp portrayed herself as something of a moderate on the issue of abortion, saying: "I do not support public funding of abortions, and believe that late term abortions should be illegal except when necessary to save the life of the mother."

On Tuesday, the Washington Post published the cease and decist letter that Donald Trump's lawyer reportedly sent Club for Growth president David M. McIntosh, along with the promise of a multi-million dollar lawsuit if the group doesn't comply.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in scheduling his U.S. visit, seems to have fallen into a trap common for many communist leaders: underestimating papal power. Xi will be following in the footsteps of Pope Francis on visits first to the White House in Washington, and then to the United Nations in New…

During my research for Vodka: How a Colorless, Odorless, Flavorless Spirit Conquered America, I met with the execs at Jim Beam who, besides selling fine bourbon, also sell Pinnacle Vodka, a brand known for its vast array of flavors: Cherry Whipped, Cookie Dough, Pumpkin Pie, Strawberry Shortcake,…

Harvard and Brown Universities had the highest response rates to a national  survey on sexual assault and misconduct on college campuses released this week. The Association of American Universities’ results showed 26 percentof those surveyed at Harvard and 25 percent of respondents at Brown said…

Vice President Joe Biden has made significant gains in the national Democratic primary polls in recent weeks, with a new Bloomberg poll showing a quarter of registered Democratic primary voters supportin him, his best numbers yet.

On the continuing question of whether Pope Francis is a menace or a farce, the Holy Father offered another data point during an interview with members of the media aboard his flight to the United States on Tuesday. CNN’s Rosa Flores asked a pretty straightforward question about Francis’s refusal to…

En route to Friday’s state dinner in his honor, Chinese President Xi Jinping stopped off in Seattle to meet with the heads of America’s great technology firms, from which China denies regularly stealing $300 billion annually in intellectual property, according to the Wall Street Journal. His goal:…

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton sat down with the Des Moines Register editorial board yesterday to answer questions. After, Des Moines Register reporter Jennifer Jacobs managed to ask Clinton a few questions while she was already in the building.

Here's a less than illuminating passage from a hot-off-the-presses New York Times story on Scott Walker bowing out of the presidential race, headlined "Scott Walker’s Dismal Finish Is a Fitting Result, Old Foes Say" :

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton mocked her Republican rivals for the White House for being unable to name an "American woman" worthy of going on the $10 dollar bill—and then was unable to name one such woman herself.

The media have been quite zealously attacking Ben Carson for criticizing aspects of Islam that he believes are incompatible with the American political system. The skeptical among us -- and that, unfortunately, must include every discerning consumer of mainstream media -- would note that much of…

Moody’s must have it in for France. Sure, its economy is moribund. Sure, its trade unions are among the most intransigent in the world. But surely the socialist government deserves some credit for one of the most significant reforms in 200 years.

As an addendum to Jonathan Last's piece about the bizarre willingness of liberals rushing to the defense of illiberal Muslims so long as it makes the GOP look bad, BuzzFeed has a nice story up today about a Muslim-American woman embracing her heritage and celebrating Eid. But BuzzFeed's story…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Scott Walker's early departure from the 2016 race.

After great fanfare, and much handwringing from an anxious higher education community, the Obama administration finally launched its ballyhooed College Scorecard. It disappoints, but not, perhaps, for the reasons that many think.

Senate Democrats blocked House-passed legislation on Tuesday that would prohibit almost all abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy, a point when human infants can feel pain and survive if born prematurely.

Carly Fiorina's team is fighting back after recent criticism of her from Donald Trump and others. In an email to reporters, spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores responds to each claim:

Ed Feulner, the former president of the Heritage Foundation, writes about our culture's double standards for tobacco cigarettes and for marijuana. Here's an excerpt:

Did David Cameron, Britain's excruciatingly reasonable prime minister, commit an unspeakable act when he was a student at Oxford?

Last week, the Census Bureau released its annual report on income, poverty, and health insurance in the United States. Don’t worry if you missed it. So did the Wall Street Journal, which noted several days later that the White House had failed to comment on the rather grim numbers. On Friday, the…

Because presidential politics are as much about in-group signaling as actual policy, Ben Carson is locked in a media-generated controversy about whether or not he’d be down with having a Muslim president. Carson was asked about this deeply-important question on Meet the Press. He said no. And when…

The fallout from Scott Walker's exit from the presidential race continues in Iowa, which had been the Wisconsin governor's stronghold. The Des Moines Register's Jennifer Jacobs reports that Texas senator Ted Cruz has gained the support of three of Walker's county chairs:

Four members of Scott Walker's Iowa campaign are now aligning with Marco Rubio. With the Wisconsin governor exiting the presidential race Monday, the Walker campaign's network of activist supporters in the early primary states are free to endorse other candidates.

Florida senator Marco Rubio has picked up the support of a South Carolina Republican activist who had previously supported Scott Walker.

It’s hard to exaggerate how shocking it is that Scott Walker is out of the 2016 race on September 21.

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's presidential campaign announced a press conference for Monday evening, and the New York Times reports the Republican is likely to drop out:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confiscated a record 67 firearms located in passengers' carry-on baggage during the week of September 11, 2015. On September 11 alone, ten guns were found. Out of the 67 firearms found during the week, 56 were loaded and 26 actually had a round…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the circling of the media wagons to protect Hillary and attack Fiorina. 

As the Senate prepares to vote tomorrow on a bill banning abortion after the fifth month of pregnancy, the point at which human infants can feel pain and survive if born prematurely, Hillary Clinton has expressed opposition to legal limits on abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

The New York Times has a truly horrifying story about how the U.S. military has turned a blind eye to child sex abuse in Afghanistan as a matter of official policy: 

Jake Tapper and CNN pretended during the Republican presidential debate that Obamacare doesn’t exist.  But Republican voters won’t follow suit.  Instead, they are likely to cast their votes largely based on who looks most committed to repealing President Obama’s tenuously perched signature…

The opposition British Labour Party, now led by a leftist who favors Hamas, wants Britain to withdraw from NATO because its expansion has antagonized Vladimir Putin, give up its nuclear deterrent, and declare an arms embargo against Israel, has appointed as his shadow chancellor, one John…

Yesterday on Face the Nation, Hillary Clinton said she opposed federal bans on late-term abortions, as such abortions take place because of "medical necessity." The question from John Dickerson was specifically in reference to the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which does include the…

Meryl Streep is so extraordinary she can do anything​—​anything, that is, except play an ordinary person. She’s only tried to do so twice in her 35-year career as a leading lady, and in both cases she was called upon to embody an unsatisfied suburban wife, first in 1984’s Falling in Love and almost…

"The following is a string of subtle and routine occurrences that make me feel less human and should take their rightful place among the larger narrative of sexism in contemporary America. .  .  . ” (“The Struggle To Be Taken Seriously in the Age of Subtle Sexism,” the Charlotte News and Observer,…

"Baseball is great,” a friend said years ago as we pushed away from the kitchen table and grabbed our mitts. “It’s the only game you can play right after lunch.”

Europe’s migrant crisis, the continent’s greatest humanitarian disaster since the aftermath of World War II, continues to worsen. The summer began with mass drownings in the Mediterranean and bickering between the European Union and the governments of its member states over who should foot the bill…

"When I make a mistake,” said Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York, “it’s a beaut.”

Traditional marriage is in big trouble in the United States. Between 1960 and 2011, the share of white adults 18 and older who were married declined by 25 percent, while the declines for Hispanic and black adults were 35 percent and 50 percent respectively. 

Hillary Clinton is slipping in the polls and at the mercy of her growing email scandal. Fortunately for her, the Clintons’ ever-loyal squadron of flying monkeys is spoiling to fight anyone who dares to criticize her. Politico last week revealed that David Brock has written a book attacking the New…

Jeffrey Drazen, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, recently penned a scathing editorial about Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of fetal tissues. No, Drazen and his two coauthors (one a volunteer for Planned Parenthood) didn’t criticize the abortionists for killing fetuses in a “less…

I've always loved the sound of a serpent. Well, no, not really. The 16th-century musical instrument is breathy, buzzy, and inexact—consistently requiring the player to gesture at the note in what’s called falset: using the tension of the lips in the mouthpiece to approximate a tone that the…

Readers we hope will be pleased to learn that the Foundation for Constitutional Government—which produces the Conversations with Bill Kristol that The Scrapbook has been touting for a couple of years—has just launched a series of websites called Contemporary Thinkers. The aim is to make more easily…

The Donald Trump candidacy has inspired a hundred writers to pen a thousand think pieces about the meaning of it all. Is Trump’s surge the sign of a new breed of populism? Is it the Tea Party reborn? Is it the reemergence of the old Ross Perot-Pat Buchanan strand of protectionism? Does it signal a…

Have you ever wondered what happened to cloning? Twenty years ago, when Dolly the sheep was still bleating, cloning was seen as the most important topic in bioethics. But over the last few years it dropped off the radar. One of our favorite journals, the New Atlantis (which is published by the…

In this tale of Winston Churchill and his war cabinet, the answer to the perennial question​—​Do we really need another book about Churchill?​—​is a definite Yes. Unlike many other studies, Jonathan Schneer focuses on Churchill the wily and astute politician, a man who managed domestic politics so…

In his powerful dissent from Obergefell v. Hodges, the case in which the Supreme Court redefined marriage to include same-sex marriage, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of their faith” and that if they “exercise their religion in…

What is happening in the world? When one looks at recent news, one can’t help feeling a sense of bewilderment. A storied Olympian announces his new gender on the cover of Vanity Fair, the Supreme Court declares same-sex marriage a constitutional right, racial violence returns to St. Louis and…

A photograph of a drowned 3-year-old boy washed up on a Turkish beach after his family failed to find refuge from the war in Syria seems to have finally gotten the world’s attention. The conflict has been an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe for more than four years. A quarter of a million are…

Here are the judgments of several senators on the Obama administration’s Iran deal:

The concept of “The Three Bs” in classical music has been with us since 1854, when the writer Peter Cornelius coined the phrase while suggesting that Hector Berlioz should join Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven in the highest realm of composers. Berlioz fell from this pinnacle later in…

In June, Wired unveiled the plans for the most important building to be constructed in New York since the Freedom Tower: Two World Trade Center. The design is by the rising Danish star Bjarke Ingels, who ousted the previously selected eminent architect Sir Norman Foster.

You could tell that the plan European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker announced on September 9 for distributing 160,000 refugees around the European Union was slapdash. You could tell by the number of times Juncker felt he had to browbeat his listeners about their Nazi past. “We Europeans…

All of us at THE WEEKLY STANDARD are shocked and deeply saddened by the terrible news of the death in a cycling accident of our friend Jake Brewer, at age 34. Jake, the husband of contributing editor Mary Katharine Ham, was not only a person of great achievement and remarkable promise, but a…

A new CNN poll of the registered Republican and Republican-leaning voters finds Carly Fiorina taking second place in the GOP presidential primary, behind Donald Trump and just one point ahead of Ben Carson. The poll, taken over the course of the three days following CNN's September 16 debate, found…

In an interview this morning on CBS, Democratic presidential candidate maintained that in fact she is a "real person." Clinton made the comment in response to a question about the three words she would use to describe herself. 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the September 21, 2015 issue.

Back in 1999, The Weekly Standard ran one of my favorite cover lines ever: The New Europe: Menace or Farce? I often think of that question when I watch Pope Francis.

Democrats want more debates. Today in New Hampshire, they're making sure DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz hears them. 

The U.S. economy is chugging along. Not at high speed, but at a steady 2.25 percent annual rate, with retailers stocking up in anticipation of a very merry holiday season. The unemployment rate is down to 5.1 percent, according to the Federal Reserve Board headed lower to its “long-run normal”…

Hillary Clinton has attacked Donald Trump because he didn't rebuke an audience member who asserted President Obama is a Muslim, and not American. 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the impact of Wednesday's GOP debate.

There are two explanations, one political, one economic, for the Fed's decision to leave interest rates alone. The first of course, is that Fed chair Janet Yellen is a political animal, and the forces on her side have been agitating loudly to leave rates alone. History has shown that the Fed finds…

The man who made the American style of detective fiction international and who, according to his peer and contemporary Raymond Chandler, “gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse,” was born a poor farm boy in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Samuel…

A segment about Hillary Clinton disappointing kids ran on a New Hampshire news station. 

Say what you will about the Romney 2012 campaign, but Stuart Stevens is bright, perceptive, and candid—always worth listening to. So I was struck by his observation about Donald Trump during the course of an interview with New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman: “For Donald Trump to win, everything we…

Top Chris Christie donor Ken Langone made the case this morning on CNBC that Carly Fiorina is only doing well in the presidential race because she's a woman. "She's done nothing of any consequence in business," said Langone, a founder of Home Depot.

The latest official report of a drone in the possession of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is tucked in an August 3rd press release from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), the overseers of the air campaign in Syria and Iraq against the terrorist organization. 

We heard today from an experienced campaign hand whose judgment we at TWS have come very much to respect:

For some, politics is the family business, and increasingly so in Washington. On Thursday, Illinois Republican Darin LaHood was sworn in to the House of Representatives, taking over the seat once occupied by disgraced congressman Aaron Schock and, before that, LaHood's own father, Ray LaHood.

Martin O'Malley has continued to be a thorn in the side of the Democratic National Committee. Over the past few weeks, he's publicly criticized the DNC and its chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, for limiting debates in order to help Hillary Clinton. Schultz hasn't taken it lightly.

While their fireworks have earned Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump the most attention after Wednesday night’s Republican debate in California, the winner for the most detailed and substantive performance may go to Marco Rubio. 

Did you see the CNN debate on Wednesday night? Neither did I. Oh, I watched a few highlights that seemed to be agitating social media—Carly Fiorina cutting Donald Trump down to size, for example—but like the Super Bowl, I contented myself with reading about it the next morning.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer John McCormack on last night's CNN debate, and his analysis of it live from Simi Valley, California.

I first learned of Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett on Twitter—fittingly—in 2013, when he asked me for a copy of my then-Twitter header image of the U.S. Supreme Court justices holding Care Bears (except Justice Scalia, who is photoshopped holding broccoli). Since that time, I've had the…

The buzz around Sir Elton John's purported phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin has many of the trappings of a high school rumor mill.

Republicans debated on the eve of Constitution Day, and did our founding document more justice than usual. The Republican debate on CNN was full of impressive performances by nearly all the candidates—and most who addressed the Constitution did so in a less clichéd way than they typically do. 

Last night Hillary Clinton appeared on the Jimmy Fallon show. The subject of Donald Trump came up. Clinton asked Fallon, "Have you ever been able to let him touch—let you touch his hair?" Fallon replied, "I've never touched his real—I don't know, I think it is real hair. He never let me touch his…

In 1878, William Gladstone described the U.S. Constitution as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” Gladstone was right.

Simi Valley, Calif.

This was a debate I thought would never end. It lasted for three hours and seemed like longer. We even learned from each of the eleven Republican presidential candidates whose face should be on the $10 bill. No blood was spilled, metaphorically speaking. There were no losers.

Over at the Free Beacon, our old colleague Matthew Continetti is already up with his thoughts about the debate. He's reached the conclusion that "debates basically serve to propel second-tier candidates to the top. That’s what happened with Ben Carson last time. And it’s what’s going to happen to…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with online editor Daniel Halper, wrapping up the CNN Republican Debate.

From the beginning of her campaign for president, Carly Fiorina has had to deal with lowered expectations, encapsulated in a frequent question: Aren’t you just running for vice president? “People ask that because I’m a woman and I’m not a politician,” she told me earlier this year. “I’m running to…

Senator Marco Rubio explained foreign policy in Russia and Syria concisely during Wednesday's Republican Debate. Putin is "trying to replace us as the single most important power broker in the Middle East and this president is allowing it." Watch the full clip here: 

As Jeb Bush and Donald Trump were arguing, Scott Walker interjected:

Earlier this evening, Governor Jerry Brown of California hinted that he might, possibly run for president of the United States. "You could have a lot of big surprises," said Brown.

About fifty protestors joined together outside of the Democratic National Committee on South Capitol Street this afternoon to protest the party's debate rules.

California governor Jerry Brown gave signs in a Wednesday interview on CNN that he may be considering running for president.

As Republicans in the Senate bring forward a bill next week that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks of gestation—when babies are capable of feeling pain and can survive outside the womb—Senate minority leader Harry Reid declined to say whether he supports any limits on abortion during any…

A reader sends in this image from the streets outside tonight's GOP Debate. It's the symbol from the Hunger Games -- a symbol of rebellion from the YA novel where kids fight to overthrow a dystopian cociety run by elites. The unorthodox street art campaign for Cruz has been seen in other parts of…

Comedy Central is not a network known for its conservatism, but for as long as its been on the air, South Park has always embraced the free market. Fortunately, its new season returns tonight—hopefully the GOP presidential debate is over by the time South Park airs!

A leading Democratic senator said Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is continuing to push for an up-or-down vote on approving the Iran nuclear deal to score points with "some groups."

Asheville, N.C.

Secretary Kerry passed up the opportunity this week to recognize one of the most important holidays on the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashanah. In recent weeks, however, Kerry took time to recognize the Independence/National Days of Guatemala, Papua New Guinea, and Andorra, among others. He also issued…

Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is "thrilled" the Republican debate is drowning out the Democratic primary. The DNC chair made the comments today on MSNBC:

Hillary Clinton is not so interested in debating her Democratic primary opponents, but her campaign wants voters to watch the Republican debate tonight on CNN.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on tonight's CNN Republican Debate.

It's fight night again and if the second GOP debate is anything like the first (no guarantees on that, by the way) then whatever happens tonight will shape the next several weeks of the race.

President Obama believes the Republicans are hijacking the economy. He made this latest statement in an email sent out to supporters of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Democrats are protesting Democrats later today on Capitol Hill. A group calling for more Democratic presidential debates will gather outside the Democratic National Committee's headquarters to do demand more debates. 

Here’s what I’d like to hear from each of the Republican presidential candidates in tonight’s nationally televised debate:

Vice President Joe Biden took aim at Donald Trump in remarks today in Washington.

For anyone who has followed Donald Trump on the stump, undoubtedly they've heard The Donald spin a tale of what he would do as president if, say, Ford plans to build a new plant outside of the United States.

The White House seems to think that Vladimir Putin’s Syria policy is a blunder of the first order. Recently, the Russians have deployed combat planes, tanks, ships, engineers, technicians, as well as special forces units to help sustain Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But that’s a bad idea, President…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the upcoming GOP debate.

A new poll of the Republican presidential primary from the New York Times and CBS News shows consensus frontrunner Donald Trump making "modest" gains, from 24 percent at the beginning of August to 27 percent. But his closest rival for the nominatjon, Ben Carson, has seen a bigger jump in that time,…

One of the worst things about Obamacare is that it provides taxpayer funding of abortion.  This is one of the nearly countless reasons why Obamacare must be repealed, and it’s one of the core reasons why it is crucial for Republican presidential candidates to show they have an alternative that…

With their attacks on his ideology, misogyny, and hair failing to wound him, Donald Trump’s opponents have decided to really cut to the quick: They’re now attacking the boastful billionaire’s business record. For a man whose sense of self-worth is clearly wrapped up in his net-worth (he has…

Hillary Clinton is concerned about Donald Trump. She expressed her concern in an interview with Extra's Mario Lopez.

A half-forgotten exchange of letters between two titans of the Republican party, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, contains an urgent lesson for the presidential candidates who will debate at the Reagan Library on Wednesday: Tell the country that you will be the president of all Americans, and…

On Wednesday of this week, the Missouri legislature is meeting for an override session. Unique to state legislatures, this is when the legislature has a chance to override any veteos issued by the governor.

The answer is climate change—at least if the question is “why should we keep a costly and ineffective government agency." The Obama Administration’s recent repurposing of a heretofore moribund government agency as a tool to soften the impact of climate change—a move heralded in a recent Washington…

The super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina has a new 60-second ad that's a not-so-subtle response to her GOP rival Donald Trump. The ad, titled "Faces," features the former Hewlett-Packard CEO speaking about the important role of women in the Republican party.

New polls of likely Republican voters in two early primary states show Donald Trump maintaining a solid lead for the presidential nomination. The CBS News/YouGov tracking polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire show the real-estate magnate and reality TV star with big leads in those states.

Weekend remarks concerning Russia's current activities in Syria by Gen. Philip Breedlove, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO's supreme allied commander, are far from reassuring. Speaking to reporters after NATO's Military Committee Conference in Istanbul on Saturday, Breedlove…

Jombang, Indonesia

Just as Philip Larkin sighed that the sexual revolution “came too late for me,” I had already aged out of rap as it emerged with enormous force in the 1980s. I was then in my twenties and, listening to it, I felt for the first time the same sort of generational disdain that adults of the 1950s had…

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers, for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, If the…

Juneau, Alaska

The American people believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. When pollsters ask whether the country is on the right or the wrong track, wrong track prevails by better than two to one. And the American people are right. We are going the wrong way: The economy isn’t strong, the…

‘It was $5, right?” I was at a convenience store in northern Missouri, filling up with gas, and the guy next to me was checking his gas budget with the lady in the passenger seat of his car. He was driving what might be the last K-car on the road. He noticed that I had overheard their conversation…

As inconvenient as it may be, the forces of supply and demand are difficult to counteract—especially in labor markets. The Obama administration has exerted much effort attempting to do so over the last seven years, and it has yet to succeed. 

Storm Lake, Iowa

Americans always profess to be shocked that our fellow Americans—well, many of them, anyway—seem to take an inordinate interest in the comings and goings of the British royal family. When, for example, Prince Harry or the Duchess of Cambridge, or any one of their better-known relatives sets foot on…

Half of Wyatt Prunty’s ninth volume of poetry consists of “Nod,” a dream-vision narrative set mostly in the darkness of a shopping mall parking lot in Atlanta. Standing there, a man, who refers to himself as Fulton, though “of course there was no Fulton,” finds himself in an age so mired in…

Last week the White House puffed its feathers when Barbara Mikulski became the 34th Democratic senator to come out in favor of the nuclear deal with Iran. Mikulski’s support ensures enough votes in Obama’s pocket to sustain a presidential veto on a resolution of disapproval, but it’s still not…

Two weekends ago, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City held its annual monetary conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The left flew in hundreds of protesters donning green T-shirts that demanded “Higher Wages for America” and chanting, “We’re Fed Up.” The crowd was an assortment of college kids…

Mariupol, Ukraine

Longtime readers may recall The Scrapbook’s fixation on red-light cameras, which represent a perfect case of nanny-statedom. They are a technological innovation designed to create government revenue under the rubric of “safety.” Yet they fail at every level: Across the country, they have been…

‘You could have your students write tweets as if they were Martin Luther King Jr.,” said the educational consultant leading our professional development workshop.

In 2008, at the age of 27, Roger Federer had finished his fourth consecutive year as the number-one ranked tennis player in the world, already won 13 Grand Slam tournaments, and made most of his opponents look as if they had come to play against him with a cricket bat instead of a tennis racquet.…

Fast-food chain Chipotle finds itself being sued for advertising that its food is “GMO-free.” The lawsuit is still nascent but may attain class-action status and already threatens to be a PR nightmare for the burrito joint. For those following the debate over genetically modified foods—and we use…

Most summers I’ve had a fruit and vegetable garden, but rarely has my summer reading included much about gardening other than nursery catalogues and seed packets and basic how-to articles. This year has been different. My Summer in a Garden by Charles Dudley Warner, first published in 1870, has had…

When Chief Justice John Roberts administers the oath of office to the next president, he will be flanked by three, and almost four, octogenarians: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (83), Antonin Scalia (80), Anthony Kennedy (80), and Stephen Breyer (77). The next president will likely have the…

Fire Island, New York

In the early 1990s, amid public outrage over Robert Mapplethorpe’s sexually explicit photographs, including several of private parts, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) would settle arguments on the matter by pulling out his own. That the most avowedly conservative politician in America felt the need to…

A special Conversation With Bill Kristol, featuring Spence Abraham and Jay Cost: 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the September 14, 2015 issue.

Missouri could become the 26th state to adopt a right-to-work law next week, marking the first time in history that the law has been on the books in a majority of U.S. states.

A new nine-month-long study by the Marine Corps found that including women in combat units had a negative impact on unit cohesion and performance, the Washington Post reports:

The photo of 3-year old Aylan Kurdi, drowned on a Turkish beach, elicited declarations of concern from media around the world. Aylan’s brother Galip, 5, and their mother Rehanna died in the same incident. After four years of civil war in Syria, we were told, the horrific photograph would awaken the…

Fellow poets and lovers of poetry, take heart—our art is relevant again!  Though not necessarily for the right reasons.

In eleven days the much-travelled Pope Francis will set foot on American soil for the first time: Unlike his two immediate predecessors, he did not visit this country before rising to the papacy. His baggage will include the mind-set typical of Latin American anti-U.S. populists, in his case the…

Cloning is one of those ethical problems that seemed terribly urgent twenty years ago, but which, for some reason, dropped off of our collective radar. Ever wonder why? Well now the New Atlantis has the definitive answer.

After all the media coverage and the judicial back and forth, the New England Patriots returned to the field Thursday night and won a football game. Tom Brady, who had been banned for throwing softballs, then re-instated by a federal judge (we pay those guys for that?), threw four…

Newt Gingrich spoke with Bill Kristol about the 2016 presidential race, Donald Trump, and Ben Carson:

Today, Jon Favreau, the former director of speechwriting for President Obama, tweeted that Vice President Joe Biden should run for president.

After the United States shut down its airspace after the September 11th attack, a unique problem emerged: international flights. 

As Americans stop to remember the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania that took place 14 years ago, the WEEKLY STANDARD shares some remembrances and stories from our writers:

Nearly 14 years ago, President George W. Bush took to the mound at Yankee Stadium to throw out the ceremonial first pitch in Game 3 of the World Series. This was weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Bush's down-the-middle-strike was a triumphant moment that helped unite the country.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the Iran deal, and his recent piece The Supporting Actors.

Update: Turns out Trump re-sent the tweet hours later in 2013, and has not yet deleted it.

At a speech at President Reagan’s alma mater on Thursday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker challenged his GOP rivals on Obamacare.  Walker highlighted his own Obamacare alternative, promising he would send it to Congress on Day One. Observing that members of Congress “need a little incentive to get…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the Iran deal.This podcast can be downloaded here. Subscribe to THE WEEKLY STANDARD's iTunes podcast feed here.ADVERTISEMENTThis podcast is brought to you by The Great Courses. TWS Podcast Listeneirs Can Get up to 80% off by visiting this…

In a tweet calling for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, Hillary Clinton inadvertently invited supporters to "Stand with Hillary and overturn Planned Parenthood." While the main part of the tweet (archived here) says "Overturn Citizens United", the…

Shortly before the start of a "Grassroots Organizing Meeting with Hillary Clinton" at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the backdrop of the stage fell down. Watch the video from America Rising PAC here:

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York is the highest-ranking Democrat to oppose President Obama's executive agreement with Iran over the Islamic republic's nuclear program. But during the Senate Democratic leadership's final press conference prior to a vote on the deal, Schumer didn't say anything…

Senator Ben Sasse went to the Iranian embassy to blast President Obama's "terrible deal" with Iran:

President Barack Obama is celebrating the Senate's Iran deal vote, in which he failed to gain a majority in support of his top foreign policy initiative.

Today on Ellen, Hillary Clinton was asked by a 5-year-old about not driving a car in nearly two decades.

Senator Tom Cotton is blasting Senate Democrats from failing to block the Iran nuclear deal.

Much to the dismay of my wife, I bought an authentic red "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" hat from Donald Trump's webpage, and insisted on wearing it every day for a week to see what would happen. The hat cost $25, plus shipping.

In the 1990s, Hillary Clinton famously accused a "vast right-wing conspiracy" of trying to bring down her husband, President Bill Clinton. Emails from Mrs. Clinton's tenure as secretary of state demonstrate that the specter of a conspiracy of some sort continued to haunt her years later.

We have a debate coming next week and far from fading, The Donald is now in the strongest position he's thus far occupied. He's at 28 percent in the RealClear average. He's got leads of +7 and +15 in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively. And he's running closer to Clinton in general election…

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, came out swinging against several of the Republican candidates for president in a Thursday breakfast with reporters. The Florida congresswoman reserved most of her fire for her fellow Sunshine Staters, calling Marco Rubio a…

The chairwoman of the Democratic party attributed the popularity of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump as evidence that Americans are fed up with their current government. 

The EB-5 program allows people from foreign countries who want to invest in U.S. businesses, and who can do so in a way that will create jobs in the United States, to receive a visa to work in the country. It is a small program: The legislation that created it can allocate no more than 10,000 visas…

More Iowa Democrats say they support Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in a new Quinnipiac poll of likely caucusgoers. According to the poll, 41 percent say they support Sanders, the Vermont senator, with 40 percent supporting Clinton, the former secretary of state and New York senator. In…

Martin O'Malley, the Democratic presidential candidate, accused the chairwoman of his party of rigging the primary process for Hillary Clinton. Speaking on MSNBC's Morning Joe Thursday, O'Malley praised vice chairs of the Democratic National Committee who have called for more primary debates. The…

Longtime Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe, the governor of Virginia, is scolding Hillary Clinton for improper use of email while she was secretary of state. But the former DNC chair is glad Clinton is apologizing.

Deep in the transcript of the interview ABC’s David Muir conducted with Hillary Clinton yesterday comes an indirect but very tough shot at the man she worked for and hopes to replace. In the course of answering a question about her mother, Clinton described her mother’s difficult upbringing and…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the fate of the Iran deal and the House GOP's last minute efforts to delay or defeat it.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush laid out details of his economic plan in North Carolina Wednesday, focusing primarily on how he would reform the tax code as president. The proposal, Bush said, would help achieve his stated goal of four-percent annual economic growth.

As the 90 degree sun beat down on a thousand or two activists on the west front of the Capitol Wednesday, a carnival of varied speakers lined up to cheer up the faithful. Initially, there were supposed to be about 25 speakers. The real total was much closer to 50.

Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Brookings Institution Wednesday morning, took some hard jabs at the Obama administration, while expressing her support for the Iran nuclear deal. Among other things, Clinton said that the U.S. was

It would appear that few people know as much about business as liberal spokespeople. One of them, Generation Opportunity’s Patrice Reed, recently wrote in the Washington Post that the rules governing food truck owners in Washington, D.C.—one of the few approved occupations in the eyes of app…

Today the Tea Party Patriots hosted the "Stop the Iran Deal Rally” at the U.S. Capitol. Speakers included Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, among others. Trump walked on stage to the song, "It's The End Of The World" by R.E.M.

The summer of Trump rolls into autumn. Now the GOP frontrunner, that swashbuckling renegade presidential candidate will take the stage Wednesday afternoon at a rally behind the U.S. Capitol to protest the Iran nuclear pact. Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck will be there too, but it’s Trump who…

In a speech today about the Iran deal at the Brookings Institution, Hillary Clinton mentioned Russia and Vladimir Putin. She defended her Russia Reset, and then said something strange:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has written a letter to CNN president Jeff Zucker asking the news network donate the ad profits for next week's GOP presidential debate to veterans. Trump posted a photo of the letter to his Twitter account. See the tweet below:

Many American cities have suffered through alarming increases in their homicide rates this summer. New York City is not one of them. 

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has announced the outline of his tax proposal in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed published Tuesday evening. Among Bush's proposals are three income-tax brackets (28 percent, 25 percent, and 10 percent), cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, and eliminating…

Bill Clinton, the husband of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, will “reemerge,” as CNN puts it, next week on behalf of his wife’s presidential campaign. The former president will headline a fundraiser in Chicago on September 17, the first of what the campaign says will be several events where…

A new Pew poll finds shrinking support among the American people for the nuclear deal with Iran. The poll found 49 percent are opposed to the deal, with 21 percent in support and 30 percent who say they don't know.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt argued that Syria may be “the most surprising of President Obama’s foreign-policy legacies: not just that he presided over a humanitarian and cultural disaster of epochal proportions, but that he soothed the American people…

The conservative movement, along with numberless friends of every political coloration, lost a stalwart this weekend when John Von Kannon died, after a long wrestling match with cancer. Most of those friends knew him as “Baron,” though when he was mentioned in the third person, the definitive…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Hillary Clinton's bad weekend and the Iran deal. 

Ever since the start of the campaign, Hillary Clinton boosters have been complaining about coverage of their candidate in the New York Times. And today the paper announced that Washington bureau chief Carolyn Ryan is being demoted -- or shifting roles! -- at the paper. 

A new national poll of Democrats and Democrat leaners finds Hillary Clinton with 42 percent support in her party's presidential primary, down 10 points from a month ago and facing significant opposition from other candidates. The Monmouth University poll found Clinton, the former secretary of…

The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign is planning on relaunching (or reintroducing, or reengineering) its candidate this fall, reports the New York Times. Reporter Amy Chozick says the former secretary of state will attempt to "show her humor" and "show her heart."

In a Labor Day speech, Hillary Clinton promised that, when she is president:

With the summer of Trump coming to a close, the fall might belong to Dr. Ben Carson. Earlier this year, we labeled Carson "the 2016 campaign’s most interesting long shot" -- but that long-shot is seeing a rise in the polls in Iowa, and nationally.

Details of President Obama's travel to Warren, Michigan this Wednesday intended only for the press are revealed in an apparent inadvertent posting of a media advisory on the White House website over the weekend. The posting, which includes a reminder that "MEDIA LOGISTICS BELOW ARE FOR PLANNING…

Hillary Clinton is planning to be more spontaneous, a New York Times story reports. And finally the American people will get to know the real Hillary Clinton.

The results of the latest straw poll of WEEKLY STANDARD readers are in. It's not a scientific poll, of course—but since the respondents are very perceptive WEEKLY STANDARD readers, I'm going to claim (why not?) that the results are a suggestive leading indicator of where the GOP race may be going.

The results of the latest straw poll of WEEKLY STANDARD readers are in. It's not a scientific poll, of course--but since the respondents are very perceptive WEEKLY STANDARD readers, I'm going to claim (why not?) that the results are a suggestive leading indicator of where the GOP race may be going.

Bill Kristol, the chairman of the Emergency Committee for Israel, has a statement on behalf of the group:

I'm pleased to let you know that the Foundation for Constitutional Government, which produces the Conversations that I've been hosting for a couple of years, has just released a series of websites called Contemporary Thinkers.  The aim is to make more easily accessible the works of pioneering…

Joe Biden had praise for Bernie Sanders, but had nothing for Hillary Clinton. Biden, of course, is considering challenging Sanders and Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In the boss's weekly newsletter (sign up here!), released this morning, he revealed the results of the sixth non-scientific straw poll of TWS readers.

In the president's Labor Day speech today in Boston, Barack Obama used New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady to make the case for unions. 

It's Labor Day—the end of summer, the beginning of the school year (though now schools usually begin earlier), the time when the pennant races get interesting (will the Mets collapse yet again?), and the traditional kick-off for the presidential races (as you may have noticed, those now begin…

It’s been a rough month for Scott Walker. From February through July, the Wisconsin governor topped virtually every poll of likely GOP voters in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. But after a lackluster performance in the opening Republican presidential debate on August 6, Walker dropped nearly…

The difference between man and woman is the force that hauls life forward (as the Talmud remarks) and the origin of everything that is most beautiful in our world. I thought I understood that, but I didn’t until my father died. The whole can transcend the sum of parts, and that’s why Judaism deems…

At age 10, Maya R. did something that would disturb just about anyone: “Me and my step-brothers, who were ages 8 and 5, ‘flashed’ each other and play-acted sex while fully clothed,” she told Human Rights Watch researcher Nicole Pittman. After copping to the incident in juvenile court, Maya’s…

There was a memorable instance of multiculturalism last week that The Scrapbook heartily commends to readers. Google for the touching video of the ceremony at the Elysée Palace in which the president of France, François Hollande, pins the Legion of Honor ribbons on Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler,…

Three of the Republican presidential candidates are sons of immigrants. Marco Rubio’s parents—his father a bartender, his mother a maid—came from Cuba. The parents of Bobby Jindal emigrated from India, his father an engineer, his mother a student who later earned two master’s degrees. Ted Cruz’s…

Whatever the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the summer of 2015 will be remembered as the summer of Trump and Sanders. The other candidates, especially the Republicans, could learn a lesson from the two renegades, who have figured out how to capitalize on the fact that America is in a…

The Gift​—​a compact picture written and directed by the Australian actor Joel Edgerton​—​is the best American thriller in 20 years or more. On its own limited terms, The Gift is an almost perfect piece of work; in an extraordinarily controlled debut behind the camera, Edgerton doesn’t make a false…

When James Angelos embarks on a series of trips to report on the Greek debt crisis, he finds that no one is to blame for it. On Zakynthos, for example, three-quarters of blindness disability beneficiaries were exposed as frauds. The island’s ophthalmologist had liberally handed out certificates of…

The economic recovery is barely worthy of the name, and there is evidence that inequality in America is increasing. Ignoring the first rule of statistics—correlation is not causation—progressives see this as a new reason to expand government. Reduce inequality and the growth rate will increase. 

Amy Kass was a great reader of George Eliot; she also had the sympathetic imagination so prized by the author of Middlemarch. Even in the difficult, yet beautiful, final weeks in hospice care, Amy found the generous strength to study the novel’s opening pages with her oldest granddaughter, raising…

The Scrapbook is revising its opinion of “word clouds,” which we have heretofore mocked. That’s because we were so entertained by the ones produced in Quinnipiac University’s latest national poll. Besides the usual questions about preferences for the 2016 candidates, voting intentions, and so…

A little over a century ago, Rep. Frederick Gillett (R-Mass.) read something in the New York Times that vexed him. The Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Roads advertised that it was seeking to hire a publicity expert. Gillett could not understand why a government agency needed someone to…

Twenty-one years ago, Fortune boldly declared “The End of the JOB.” Thanks to rapid advances in technology, people had been freed from the tyranny of the nine-to-five workplace. Now they could set their own hours and schedules, do without constant oversight and supervision, and concentrate on a…

During a literary career that lasted a quarter of a century, Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) published six novels of the macabre, a collection of short fiction, two books for children, a play, and two comic memoirs of motherhood​—​enough work to fill a small shelf. But she’s best known for a nine-page…

Although I was a frequenter of burlesque in its last days, with its comedians, strippers, and feeble orchestra​​—​​the Casino Theater in Boston was a good escape from the toils of graduate English at Harvard​​—​​I knew little about its more dignified ancestor, the Ziegfeld Follies. So this account…

In recent years, I’ve begun to worry that I should think more about aging. (I know, I know — everyone is aging, but the term only seems to be used for people over 60.) The Beatles wrote “When I’m Sixty-four,” but I am 74—older than a baby boomer—so it’s irresponsible of me to know so little about…

When 55-year-old Stephen Pasceri walked into a Boston hospital last January and fatally shot Michael Davidson, a 44-year-old heart surgeon who had taken care of Pasceri’s late mother, his futile rage deprived others of a superb physician and changed in an instant the lives of Dr. Davidson’s three…

More than a few Republican graybeards are panicking about how the rise of Donald Trump is pulling at the seams of the GOP’s big tent. However, the Republican establishment itself has played a big role in creating this particular Frankenstein’s monster.

A remembrance of University of Chicago professor Amy A. Kass (1940-2015), by Caitrin Keiper.

Duke University has managed to court controversy before the school year even begins. Over the summer, the school assigned all incoming freshmen to read Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. (Note: “Graphic novel” is the preferred descriptor for upscale comic books.)…

Donald Trump is not a serious candidate. Donald Trump is not a serious man. The truth of these statements is supposed to be self-evident. But one begins to wonder, are they true?

‘The Muse of History must not be fastidious.” Thus Churchill the historian. But as Churchill the politician knew, the Muse of Politics must not be fastidious either.

A few people have asked me to elaborate on the thought I tried hurriedly to express at the end of the This Week roundtable. Here it is: Republicans have a problem, while Democrats have a crisis.

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley is urging to the U.S. to take in 65,000 Syrian refugees. O'Malley made the plea in an email this evening to supporters.

“A fact can be a beautiful thing,” sings one of the characters in the award-winning musical, “Promises, Promises.” True. Unfortunately, a gaggle of facts can be somewhere between confusing and a curse, especially if you are a central banker who has specialized in promises, promises that a process…

Bitcoin value dropped significantly in August, which proves that Bitcoin and crypto-currency markets are still developing. The value of Bitcoin is tumultuous to put it lightly, but dropping from $256 on August 17th to $200 on the 25th of August is pretty a big deal. Furthermore, this drop happened…

When Donald Trump botched a question Thursday about General Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force, it wasn’t the first time. He did the same thing last month during the Fox News debate, but his answer was largely overlooked in the post-debate hysteria over Trump’s answers to questions on a…

Hugh Hewitt’s interview with Donald Trump has received a fair amount of attention, mainly because Trump didn’t know the answers to some of Hewitt’s supposed “gotcha” questions.

Hillary Clinton sat down with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Friday in a rare one-on-one interview. After several questions from Mitchell about Clinton's use of a private email and a homebrew server while she was secretary of state, the Democratic frontrunner apologized the controversy was "confusing" the…

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is launching his first TV ad campaign next week, according to a spokesperson. The $500,000 purchase for New Hampshire TV markets will begin next Wednesday and run through the rest of September. The campaign says 15 percent of that buy will go toward…

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has released its latest statistics on the number of former Guantanamo detainees who are either confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight. As expected, there has been a slight increase in the number of ex-detainees who have rejoined…

Not long ago, one of my favorite, but alas now defunct radio shows used to keep an Apology Clock. This time-piece counted very specific numerals: The Apology Clock ticked off each time someone famous was forced to apologize for their indiscretions. Since the Apology Clock is a product of our SJW…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the Donald Trump plateau, his signing of the GOP loyalty pledge and what that means, and whether or not Carly Fiorina can sieze on some of her momentum going into the CNN debate.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is currently playing at Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre, must be a nightmare to direct.

The eagerly anticipated jobs report for August has come in and it is a disappointment … sort of. Expectations were for an increase of 217,000 jobs. The number was … 173,000. But

Writing in his weekly newsletter, the boss plugged the latest episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol. 

Radio host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Donald Trump Thursday and asked the Republican frontrunner some details on foreign policy. After Trump confused some terminology, he accused Hewitt of asking "gotcha questions."

On C-Span's Washington Journal this morning, former Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone plugged the boss's recent editorial on Donald Trump, 'Up from Trumpism' and that the editorial was "#yuge"

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has long observed that Obamacare, which President Obama pitched as a great deal for Americans of all stripes, is really only for the near-poor and near-elderly—at the expense of the middle class and the young. While only a small minority has benefitted from the 2,400-page…

Hal Dardick and Bill Ruthhart of the Chicago Tribune report that

A spokesman for Hillary Clinton told CNN he did not know what it means for a computer server to be "wiped."

The Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) is replete with bad policies. The so-called Cadillac tax is not one of them.

A new Monmouth poll of registered or leaning Republican primary voters nationally finds New York businessman Donald Trump continuing to lead in the crowded GOP field. Trump's support is at 30 percent, 4 points higher than he was in Monmouth's August poll and 17 points higher than in its July poll.

News stories announcing that President Obama has the votes to protect his Iran deal from Congressional disapproval have led to debates here and in Israel over the campaigns against that deal by AIPAC and by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

President Obama’s unilateral renaming of Mount McKinley in Alaska has agitated the Ohio congressional delegation, and more than a few observers across party lines, largely because it was done without constitutional authority. To be sure, such niceties have not stopped this president in the past.…

Here’s a recent Washington Post headline:

On Wednesday, according to a report by WJLA in Washington, "Barvetta Singletary, a White House staffer, resigned today following assault charges." This dramatic news, however, received scant coverage in the major media. As of Thursday morning, only The Hill and Roll Call had covered the…

While looking through the newest batch of Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department, one finds a disturbing anti-Israel trend. Her advisers regularly criticized Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the "US. Jewish community," and AIPAC.

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. And, there's also special new Democratic field betting game, since Joe Biden is flirting with running.

Comedian Stephen Colbert launches his version of The Late Show on CBS on September 8, and one of his first guests will be Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush. The Bush campaign was quick to turn the appearance into a fundraising opportunity. As the Associated Press reported, the campaign…

A lame duck President Obama, released next year from any lingering political constraints, will make a likely final official visit to Asia to attend the 42nd G-7 summit of leaders of the world’s leading economies. The summit is scheduled to be held in May 2016 in central Japan, not far from…

The Washington Post has a poll out this today that finds Hillary Clinton's numbers are down in the wake of her email scandal. The poll undercuts one of the main arguments for her candidacy -- electing the first woman president would excite female voters. While Hillary Clinton has a negative…

You've probably now heard of Ashley Madison, a dating website set up explicitly for married people looking to have affairs. Their entire system got hacked--not just member accounts and credit-card info, but internal company data, too. And the most interesting stuff to come out of it isn't about…

While looking through the newest batch of Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department, one finds a disturbing anti-Israel trend. Her advisers regularly criticized Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the "US Jewish community," and AIPAC. 

Hillary Clinton will be going to Puerto Rico later this week to discuss the "health care crisis." The Clinton campaign announced the visit in a press release this morning.

Former vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe Wednesday morning to promote their new book, Exceptional. The Cheneys spoke about national security, foreign policy issues like the Iran deal, and 2016 politics.

The latest stash of emails from Hillary Clinton's private server released by the State Department has (once again!) revealed Washington to be a particularly unbearable place, employing particularly insufferable people. From Clinton's email correspondence with her senior staff we can observe how…

Presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finds herself under growing scrutiny over the classified contents of dozens of emails (perhaps hundreds once the State Department finishes releasing them all) she sent and received as head of the State Department. As it turns out,…

A prevailing media narrative is that while Republicans have pitched a fit over Barack Obama’s negotiated deal with Iran over that country’s nuclear program, the seeds of such a deal were sown by the previous administration.

More than 200 elected officials, Republican and conservative activists, and business leaders have signed a letter to CNN president Jeff Zucker requesting the cable network award Carly Fiorina a spot in the upcoming Republican presidential primary debate. Fiorina campaign staff posted the letter on…

So far, the Republican presidential contest has been light on Obamacare, with Scott Walker — who has essentially championed the 2017 Project’s “Winning Alternative to Obamacare” — providing a noteworthy exception.  Since Obamacare is the biggest issue of Barack Obama’s presidency, why are most GOP…

He was the hope and the future of the franchise, the toast of the city, just three years ago. The Redskins had themselves a rookie quarterback who would return them to glory. And he did actually get them into the playoffs in his rookie season.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on the latest tranche of Hillary's emails.

For the last several weeks, Air Force Secretary Deborah James has been touting the deployment of F-22 Raptor fighters – the best plane America owns – to Germany as “the strong side of the coin” in an effort to reassure Eastern Europeans who have seen their air space increasingly violated by Russian…

In one of the newly release Hillary Clinton emails, a mostly redacted message from Philip Gordon to Huma Abedin and Jacob Sullivan ends with, "To quote Huma, I don't get paid enough." Abedin, Clinton’s closest aide, was able to change her fortunes with a little help from friends.

The Center for Medical Progress is out with another horrifying video exposing Planned Parenthood's practice of harvesting the organs from aborted fetuses for money. One of the people that appears in this latest video is Cate Dyer, the CEO of StemExpress, whose sister was the health policy advisor…

One of the most disturbing aspects of living through the Obama presidency is reading every week or two about some new decision that has been decreed by the executive branch rather than voted upon by the legislative branch.  Time and again, things that — in a constitutional republic — should be…

Jeb Bush has said Donald Trump "should be treated like the frontrunner" for the Republican nomination. On Tuesday, the Bush campaign continues to do just that with a short web video aimed squarely at the leading GOP contender's past "liberal" views on taxes, health care, and abortion as well as…

The State Department released another tranche of emails from Hillary Clinton's private server Monday evening. While messages between Clinton and other State and administration officials concerning the most interesting and consequential subjects (like the Benghazi attacks) were heavily redacted,…

Hillary Clinton's recently released emails includes a memo sent by David Brock titled, "Memo on Impeaching Clarence Thomas."

In one of Hillary Clinton's recently released emails, it appears she was concerned Ambassador Capricia Marshall was dancing on tables and singing.