344 articles
In a newly released email between Hillary Clinton and Philippe Reines, Reines notes he sought NFL commissioner Roger Goodell's advice, with regard to Clinton's concussion. Reines later clarifies he didn't mean with regard to her health, but instead, with regard to rumors about her deteriorating…
Retired general James Mattis of the U.S. Marine Corps recently spoke with Military History about lessons learned from his 41-year career.
President Obama is in Paris for a conference on climate change. Today he met with the leader of China, President Xi Jinping, and discussed the importance of the U.S.-China relationship in regards to fighting climate change.
Congressional Republicans plan to fight back this week against new regulations from the Obama administration's Environmental Protection Agency. The House of Representatives will take up measures against the rules as President Obama attends a global climate-change summit in Paris.
With the conference championship games all set for this coming weekend, we are now down to nine teams vying for four playoff spots. The Big 12 champion, Oklahoma (#3 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings), will all but certainly be one of those four teams. (The Big 12 has no conference championship…
After the astonishing German break through the French lines in May 1940, Winston Churchill flew to Paris to meet his French counterpart, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, and army chief Maurice Gamelin. Reynaud had called Churchill in near-hysterics, but even Churchill wasn’t prepared for the utter…
If Europe doesn’t get serious about protecting its borders, it’s going to head back to the days of barbed wire and concrete walls. That’s what President François Hollande warned when he went before a rare joint sitting of France’s National Assembly and Senate to argue for an extended three-month…
No round-up of campus lunacy this week would be complete without a mention of the farcical incident at Vanderbilt University. It was described so well by our colleague Michael Warren at weeklystandard.com (which you should visit often!) that The Scrapook is simply going to reprint his account.
Colm Tóibín did something interesting and unusual when he wrote his novel Brooklyn, which was published in 2009. He chose to tell an immigration story about an Irish girl just out of her teens who has no particular desire to go to America, no particular drive once she arrives in America, and no…
J. Edgar Hoover may have called Herbert Aptheker “the most dangerous Communist in the United States” in 1965, but an attentive reader of Gary Murrell’s interesting but very flawed biography will come away with a picture of an ideological fanatic who squandered his talents as a historian, gave…
Atlanta
Under three different CEOs, Walmart has done all kinds of somersaults to appease left-wing critics. In 2005, Lee Scott set goals of “zero waste” and “100 percent” conversion to renewable energy. In 2009, Mike Duke, the next CEO, took on Obamacare—as an outspoken supporter of the unpopular health…
Time for a Poll!
It would be an interesting exercise to trace the history of the word sanctimony. In its original derivation from the Latin sanctimonia, it seems to have had the straightforward sense of sanctity or sacredness. But centuries ago, it took on its current meaning—of pretended or affected or…
Readers are no doubt aware of the spreading contagion of public demonstrations—largely under the rubric of “Black Lives Matter”—that has agitated campuses from coast to coast. Thanks to modern electronic technology, the spectacle of a Yale college master being cursed to his face (“Who the f— hired…
In the confusion and horror of Paris in shock, the details stay with you. In the bleary early Saturday morning, behind the police barriers, a lone tour bus was still parked on Boulevard Voltaire in front of the Bataclan concert hall, where the Eagles of Death Metal gig had been bloodily interrupted…
In July the Obama administration and its European and Russian partners met with Iran in Vienna to sign the so-called nuclear deal. The general idea was to at least delay nuclear proliferation in an already volatile part of the world. No doubt the White House was hoping for much more—that the…
Having a decidedly anti-romantic view of college, I find myself not entirely opposed to the student radicals besieging campuses across the country.
In many ways, the reaction to the horrific attacks in Paris has been familiar. There were the expressions of solidarity: flowers at French embassies; social media avatars changed from silly selfies to photos of the French flag snapping defiantly in the wind; buildings across the Western world lit…
For those of us who were in Mumbai during the 2008 terrorist attacks there, the bulletins from Paris on Friday night evoked queasy déjà vu. With each shocking addition to the story—drive-by shootings at one crowded restaurant and then another, explosions reported at the other end of town, casualty…
Speaking in Paris on November 17, Secretary of State John Kerry made what are already infamous comments about the fight against terrorists and terrorism. He spoke to the staff and families of the U.S. embassy in Paris, and his remarks deserve quoting at some length—because they display a deep…
For over half a century, Harry Truman has been put forth as the paragon of presidential support for Israel. Presidents are routinely measured against the Truman standard, and under the right circumstances, they can gain the moniker “the most pro-Israel since Truman.” This informal list of honorees…
Finally there’s a protest by campus radicals The Scrapbook can sympathize with. Students at Princeton want to remove the name of the school’s most famous alumnus, President Woodrow Wilson, most notably from the university’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs. Students…
This is an unusual biography of a highly unusual man, the prodigiously gifted mathematician and professional eccentric John Horton Conway—creative scientist, teacher, showman, and cult figure. His third ex-wife told the author, Siobhan Roberts, that he was both “the most interesting person I have…
Bill Kristol joined the roundtable on ABC's This Week Sunday to discuss the 2016 election and Republican primary. Watch the video of the panel below:
The New Hampshire Union Leader has endorsed Chris Christie for president. The state's largest daily newspaper, which has a conservative-leaning editorial board, published the endorsement Saturday. Here's an excerpt:
President Obama may be walking into a trap of his own side's devising as he departs for the latest climate action summit in Paris. If Republicans can suppress their innate ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the summit’s outcome could hand the GOP an incredibly potent election-year…
In a statement released this morning by the White House, President Obama used the shooting yesterday at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado to push gun control.
On the surface, little seems to have changed as the opening bell rang for the retailers’ battle that is the holiday shopping season. On Thanksgiving day we carved some 46 million turkeys and downed 50 million pumpkin pies despite a shortage of pecans created by Chinese consumers who imported the…
How unusual is this year's GOP presidential race?
In his newsletter this week, the boss reported that "our friends over at National Review asked several contributors to write brief reflections for their 60th anniversary issue (by the way, congratulations!) about what book influenced us the most." The boss encourages everyone to take a look at the…
In a move that has sent shockwaves throughout Egypt, the Coptic Pope, Tawadros II, travelled to Jerusalem Thursday at the head of a distinguished delegation of bishops from the Coptic Church. The short flight from Cairo to Tel Aviv can be measured in minutes; the psychological distance stretches…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on President Obama's vision: The U.S. as spectator.
Sources in Beirut are confirming reports from various Middle East media outfits that Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ expeditionary unit, was wounded in the fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo recently. Fighters from Hezbollah, according to sources close to…
I'm ready to concede that Donald Trump is the most anomalous figure I've seen in presidential politics. He has defied the laws of electioneering so many times-reversing his favorable-unfavorable numbers despite universal name identification; thriving in the wake of incidents that would have sunk…
New Jersey governor Chris Christie directly challenged an account from presidential rival Donald Trump that "thousands" of Muslims in the Garden State cheered on the day of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Are you watching Scream Queens? Me neither. But I did catch a scene of the FOX slasher-comedy and was surprised to see that my father, Justice Antonin Scalia, made a cameo appearance. Sort of.
Ahmed Mohamed, the 15 year-old Muslim kid who was invited to the White House after he was arrested for bringing a clock that he allegedly built to school, has filed a $15 million lawsuit:
While campaigning in New Hampshire recently, Hillary Clinton sounded a Donald Trumpian note on immigration.
As the administration at Princeton University prepares to consider removing the name of Woodrow Wilson from the institution's school of foreign affairs amid protests, one prominent parent of a Princeton student is speaking out. New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is running for the Republican…
In this week's edition of the Kristol Clear-- which you can sign up for here-- the boss has some reading and gift suggestions for our devoted readers.
Donald Trump has joined forces with Hillary Clinton and other presidential candidates to condemn the recent announcement that Pfizer, known for its erectile dysfunction drugs, is inverting in a merger with Allergan PLC to become an Irish company.
A new poll of Iowa Republicans shows Texas senator Ted Cruz moving into a close second to Donald Trump in the race for the presidential nomination. The Quinnipiac poll of 600 likely GOP caucusgoers found 25 support Trump while 23 percent support Cruz.
The nation’s capital, a top terrorist target, has received new advice should it come under a Paris-style attack. Instead of waiting for police to arrive, D.C.’s police chief is advocating a more aggressive -- albeit unarmed -- approach.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) during President Obama's tenure, went on the Kelly File last night to talk about the possible manipulation of ISIS intelligence. He said the investigation should "start at the top. Where intelligence starts and stops is at…
On November 18, the Supreme Court of Chile issued a protective order on behalf of Leopoldo Lopez and Daniel Ceballos, two opposition mayors imprisoned without just cause in Venezuela. These brave individuals had the temerity to oppose the regime of Nicolas Maduro, and earlier this year they went…
There are only two weeks remaining in college football’s regular season (three, counting Army-Navy), and it’s becoming pretty clear which teams still have a shot at making the 4-team playoff field. Last week, 16 teams still appeared to be alive. Now, with Houston, TCU, and Utah having lost, that…
The Associated Press is running with a rather tendentious headline at the moment, "AP FACT CHECK: On climate science, most GOP candidates fail." For their fact check, the AP asked a group of Ph.D. scientists to grade presidential candidates based on their statements about global warming. To keep…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on how President Obama's failed efforts to contain ISIS hurt Hillary.
Coming up on his final year in office, the president’s mind is doubtless on his legacy. More, perhaps, than other presidents had been when they were running out the string. Obama is something of a literary man, after all, having published a best-selling memoir before his election. He is accustomed…
We have yet to find a term for the student protests going on across the country that beats Mona Charen’s “snowflake fascists” and last week the precious little Maoists at Princeton got the biggest scalp since Tim Wolfe: They brought down Woodrow Wilson himself.
A new ad from the Republican National Committee goes after Democrats on foreign policy. The ad--titled "Can Leaders Like These Keep Us Safe?"--includes voiceovers from Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and John Kerry.
The latest epside of Conversations With Bill Kristol, featuring Larry Summers:
As you may have heard, the denizens of Princeton University are in a tizzy over the fact that the school's most famous alum, former president Woodrow Wilson, was a racist. This hasn't exactly been a secret all these years, but college students have apparently run out of more relevant things to be…
Barack Obama and John Kerry have yet to comment on the death of an American murdered last week by Palestinian terrorists. Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old from Sharon, Massachusetts, was spending a year in Israel when terrorists fatally attacked him last Thursday, not far from Jerusalem.
The Washington Examiner's Jim Antle has written a comprehensive piece about the Democrats' war on youth. Antle notes that politicians and pundits on the right have been pointing out ways in which Democrats' policies hurt young people.
I taught at a university for 30 years, from 1973 until 2002. The timing of my departure was exquisite. I left before smartphones became endemic and political correctness, with triggering and microaggressions and the rest, kicked in. The courses I taught—in Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Willa Cather,…
There was a kind of grandeur about René Girard—a creator of grand theories, a thinker of grand thoughts. Born in France, he spent most of his career in the United States, before slipping away this month, age 91, at his home in California. But to read him, even to meet him, was to feel as though…
At the end of World War II, a gifted young British expert on Russia named Thomas Brimelow—later ambassador to Poland, but at the time reporting from Moscow—ventured that what the Soviet Union respected most about Great Britain was “our ability to collect friends.” Indeed, having allies in this…
It will come as no surprise to readers who are also sports fans that Cleveland has lost again—this time, at the Supreme Court.
I went to see Spotlight out of a sense of dreary duty. The movie is being touted as an Oscar possibility and has received rapturous reviews, neither of which is any guarantee of quality or enjoyment. Quite the opposite, in fact: Last year’s Oscar winner, Birdman, was similarly praised; I found it…
‘Hamilton’ review: Caitrin Keiper and Adam Keiper on the artistic implications of Alexander’s raptime band.
On the death of the former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt last week, The Scrapbook has two observations.
Last week in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton resurrected one of her favorite tales—the story of her unsuccessful effort to join the Marine Corps in the mid-1970s. The account has drawn skepticism over the years, and for good reason. She has offered little to back it up. But it’s the perfect anecdote…
Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo died in 1976, but Hollywood still hasn’t gotten over its high regard for him. He is the subject of a new movie, Trumbo, that lionizes him as a passionate supporter of the First Amendment and free speech, a true patriot. But that defines Trumbo only in terms congenial to…
For decades, the American university system has been creeping towards both moral and intellectual bankruptcy. But the events last week at Yale and the University of Missouri suggest we are reaching a tipping point, and that campus culture is transitioning from painfully idiotic to wantonly…
For three decades now, liberals, er, progressives have been trying to explain why the Reagan recovery—that explosion of economic growth that lasted two decades—actually happened. It followed the down economy of the 1970s, when both unemployment and inflation soared in tandem. This wasn’t supposed…
Is John Roberts a good judge? Ten years ago, President Bush appointed him chief justice of the United States. His anniversary, coinciding with the Supreme Court’s reconvening last month, naturally caused lawyers, scholars, and politicians to reflect upon his legacy on the Supreme Court.
Sleepless and sweaty in the “great heats” of July 1840, Ralph Waldo Emerson reached for something sublime and sensual: “There was nothing for me but to read the Vedas, the bible of the tropics.” The problem was that the “grand ethics” of Vedic mythology, and the “unfathomable power” of Vedic…
The Fleet Street journalist Tom Pocock was among the best recorders of Lord Nelson’s heroic status.
Roxanne Gay, the author of the essay collection Bad Feminist, was the recent winner of PEN Center USA’s Freedom to Write award, given to writers who have “demonstrated exceptional courage in the defense of free expression.” Gay was an unusual choice because the award usually goes to people who…
In Objective Troy the New York Times national security correspondent Scott Shane tells two intertwined stories. One recounts the life path of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born imam killed in a CIA drone strike in Yemen in 2011. The second recounts Barack Obama’s troubled love affair with the drone…
Walter! Thou shouldst be living at this hour—
The Dayton accords, formally signed in December 1995, have reached their twentieth anniversary. Dayton is commonly portrayed as a “peace agreement” for war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina and an outstanding achievement of Bill Clinton’s administration. The accords were an achievement; the war ended. Yet…
“To give oneself the law is the highest freedom. The much-lauded ‘academic freedom’ will be expelled from the German university; for this freedom was not genuine because it was only negative. It primarily meant lack of concern, arbitrariness of intentions and inclinations, lack of restraint in what…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the November 23, 2015 issue.
President Barack Obama is beginning to use tougher rhetoric when discussing ISIS. The leader of the free world, today at a press conference at the Ritz Carlton in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, vowed to destory ISIS and to take the land they are currently occupying.
At a press conference today at the Ritz Carlton in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, President Obama warned the media not to empower terrorists. The terrorists, he said, are just "a bunch of killers with good social media."
It is not for an economist to adjudicate between the president of the United States, who feels he is appealing to our better angels by asking our blessing for his plan to grant 10,000 refugees from the Syrian wars entry into our country, and his critics who fear that the wave might include…
Retailers are having difficulty moving apparel these days. One analyst attributes the groaning shelves and racks to two successive years of warm weather. So retailers’ worries will soon be over: the world’s leaders are about to assemble in Paris to end the trend to global warming, a bigger threat…
An audience member at a Memphis rally for Hillary Clinton Friday fainted during the Democrat's speech. After Clinton asked for someone to help the supporter, she joked, "I thought it was the talk of Republicans that might have done it."
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley slagged Hillary Clinton for her foreign policy approach:
The greatest “recognition” scene in Western literature takes place in Homer’s Odyssey, and occurs between storm-buffeted Odysseus and long-suffering Penelope. Shakespeare’s Pericles, a play with deep Hellenic—and specifically Homeric and Sophoclean—undertones, is its closest rival in the portrayal…
Like a lot of people my age and older, I first discovered Dalton Trumbo through Metallica. Spurred on by many late night viewings of the haunting video for the band’s anti-war single “One,” I discovered Johnny Got His Gun—Trumbo’s 1939 novel that inspired the 1971 film adaptation, which in turn…
Over the past few weeks, students at universities across America have been throwing temper tantrums at the prospect of free speech and open dialogue. On Tuesday, John Kerry justified the Charlie Hebdo slaughter and differentiated it from the Paris attacks, by saying there was "a rationale that you…
Secretary of State John Kerry believes that al Qaeda’s “top leadership” has been “neutralize[d]” as “an effective force.” He made the claim while discussing the administration’s strategy, or lack thereof, for combating the Islamic State (ISIS), which is al Qaeda’s jihadist rival. Kerry believes…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on why today's elites are so out of touch.
Were you thinking that corporate tax reform seemed like a potentially bipartisan issue that could actually get accomplished in the last year of the Obama administration? Elizabeth Warren is here to scuttle that dream.
Readers are no doubt aware of the spreading contagion of public demonstrations—largely under the rubric of “Black Lives Matter”—that has agitated campuses from coast to coast. Thanks to modern electronic technology, the spectacle of a Yale college master being cursed to his face (“Who the f— hired…
Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that al Qaeda has been neutralized -- and that he hopes ISIS will be neutralized "much faster." Kerry made the claim to a group of reporters:
The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates has won the National Book Award for Between the World and Me.
Bernie Sanders gave a big speech at Georgetown University today and used the opportunity to make clear a few things:
One of the most durable arguments for not responding as forcefully as possible to al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and jihadi groups in general is that they do not pose an “existential” threat to America. Indeed, this lies at the core of the Obama administration’s strategy for the Middle East. As the…
The Hill reports:
On Thursday, the House voted 289-127 in favor of a bill that would require greater scrutiny of Syrians and Iraqis applying to become refugees in the United States. In a stunning rebuke to President Obama, 47 Democrats ignored the president's veto threat and joined 242 Republicans to pass the…
How lucky is Hillary Clinton that her sole (credible) competitor for the Democratic nomination for president is a dyspeptic, self-described socialist who doesn’t appear to actually wish to be president? So lucky that nearly a year out from the 2016 election, she’s already running her general…
The Islamic State executed a series of devastating attacks in Paris last Friday night. President Obama responded angrily by delivering some effective precision-guided strikes. At the Islamic terrorist organization that murdered 129 and wounded hundreds of others in Paris? Of course not; he calmly…
Yesterday, members of Congress observed a moment of silence to commemorate casualties suffered by a community aligned with Bashar al-Assad in his exterminationist war against Syria’s Sunni Arab population. Last Thursday, two suicide bombers killed 46 people in Burj a-Burajneh, a Beirut neighborhood…
Former White House special counsel to President Clinton and Hillary Clinton booster Lanny Davis wants to help you become more worldly by exploring the prospect of dual citizenship in a Carrbean country!
There are a few tentative observations to be gleaned in the aftermath of the Paris attacks:
Mark Steyn has a typically great column about the reaction to the terror attacks in France and reading it is well worth your time. But I want to focus on one particular paragraph:
The Lexington Herald-Leader published an editorial cartoon Thursday mocking the Republican governor-elect Matt Bevin's position against allowing refugees from Syria to settle in Kentucky. The cartoon, drawn by Joel Pett, shows a cowering Bevin underneath his desk, while an aide points to the framed…
“It would send a demoralizing and dangerous message to the world that the United States makes judgments about people based on the country they come from and their religion.” Have these groups ever heard of the struggle for Soviet Jewry? Was it wrong to single out that group in legislation? If not,…
After meeting with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, President Barack Obama reiterated his vow to close Guantanamo. The president said that he could Americans safe and release the terrorists held there.
Walter Russell Mead has a terrific piece in the American Interest on "President Obama's Cynical Refugee Ploy."
As Kellie Lunney of Government Executive writes, a new watchdog report reveals that
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, on President Obama's politically correct foreign policy.
French President François Hollande vowed to conduct a “pitiless” war against the people responsible for Friday’s atrocities, and over the weekend, the bombings of ISIS targets in Syria began. Le président also temporarily closed all of France’s borders, but only for those seeking to leave the…
It was a story too good to check. The day after some 200 activist students at Vanderbilt University marched into the administration building to deliver their demands for more diversity and inclusivity to the school's chancellor, the reactionary forces on campus struck back in the most disgusting…
In remarks a few days ago in Turkey, President Obama said this:
The Boston Globe reports:
With just three weeks remaining in the best regular season in all of sports—a regular season whose greatness largely results from the smallness of the playoff field to follow—various teams’ prospects for making the 4-team College Football Playoff are starting to take shape. Here’s a rundown of…
Today at the Makati Shangri-La in Manila, Philippines, President Barack Obama interviewed Alibaba CEO Jack Ma. A main topic of the discussion: climate change.
President Obama, traveling in the Philippines, criticized presidential candidates for suggesting the U.S. should not take in some Syrian refugees in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris. The president said such talk is helping the terrorist group ISIS recruit. "I cannot think of a more potent…
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie slammed Secretary of State John Kerry for remarks the top diplomat made Tuesday about the attacks in Paris and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January. Kerry contrasted the Paris attacks, which he called “indiscriminate,” with the attacks on the French satire…
Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times writes that “after hedging for 17 days,” the Russians have confirmed what everyone suspected. Namely that the Metrojet 9268 that crashed in the Sinai 18 days ago was:
Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, introduced a bill Tuesday that would delay the implementation of the USA Freedom Act, legislation passed in June that ends the NSA's practice of storing U.S. phone records (the date, time, duration and numbers dialed--but not the content or identity of…
In remarks today in Paris, France, Secretary of State John Kerry justified the terror attack earlier this year that targeted the magazine Charlie Hebdo in January. This latest attack, by contrast, was different, said Kerry.
Bernie Sanders believes a recent comment from Hillary Clinton is both "silly" and "absurd." Sanders responded to Clinton's comment, which was made in the weekend debate, in an interview today with Katie Couric:
Bernard-Henri Lévy has written an intelligent and forceful, if somewhat grandiloquent, piece on Paris and its implications. Highlights:
The fight between GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio continues to heat up. Cruz set things off last week with a direct hit against Rubio over the latter’s support for the Gang of 8 immigration plan, an attack that the Rubio camp seemed ready for. This week, their debate has moved…
Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified on Capitol Hill today that President Obama's opinion of the ongoing investigation by the FBI related to Hillary Clinton has no influence on the Department of Justice. Lynch made the comments after being questioned by Rep. Bob Goodlatte:
Give a man a reputation as an early riser, as the old saw goes, and he can sleep until noon everyday. The same phenomenon evidently applies to bad reputations as well. Brand Donald Trump a bigot, and suddenly every policy he endorses, no matter how innocuous or mainstream, becomes repugnant.
President Obama admitted in an interview with Bill Simmons that "a certain arrogance crept in" during the first two years of his presidency. The rare admission came in response to a question about what he'd tell himself if could go back to 2008 and tell himself one thing.
In his press conference in Turkey on Monday, President Obama called “shameful” the proposals to give special treatment to Christian refugees from the Middle East. Here’s some of what he said:
Presidential candidate Donald Trump is threatening to go to war with Republican rival Ted Cruz. Trump was asked about Cruz's rise on CNBC.
Speaking on ABC's This Week shortly after September 11, 2001, Hillary Clinton refused to rule out profiling as a security-enhancing measure to stop terrorism.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Senior Fellow and frequent contributor Thomas Joscelyn on the fight against terrorism in the Middle East.
Like the Bourbons, Barack Obama and his national security advisers have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. They have not forgotten that they were first elected in 2008 to “end” Middle East wars, and the administration’s response to the attacks in Paris last week reveals that they have yet to…
The Washington Post has declared in a headline: "McAuliffe announces milestone in ending veteran homelessness."
The Wall Street Journal reports that those assembled at the American Bar Association meeting are urging lawyers throughout the nation “to celebrate ‘Love Your Lawyer Day’ to help promote a positive and more respected image of lawyers and their contribution to society.” Alas, we missed the…
Chris Christie reacted over the weekend to the terror attacks in Paris, France:
Iowa congressman Steve King has endorsed Texas senator Ted Cruz for president. Watch the video of King's announcement below:
In new State Department emails obtained by Judicial Watch, Hillary Clinton's close personal aide, Huma Abedin, is seen warning another aide that Clinton is "often confused."
The governor of Arkansas joined the governor of Alabama and others in saying that Syrian refugees can't come to his state. Governor Asa Hutchinson made the announcement this morning on Twitter.
CNN's Jim Acosta was one of several reporters to question President Barack Obama Monday about the current U.S. strategy against ISIS after the attack on Paris. At a press conference in Turkey, where Obama is meeting with other members of the G20 nations, Acosta asked a pointed question.
Waking up this morning, I noticed a friend sharing a story from a news blog called "The Daily Patriot." It claimed that a security guard, a Muslim man by the name of Zouheir, was the one who stopped a suicide bomber outside of the Stade de France on Friday. Here's the lede:
Bill Kristol joined ABC's This Week yesterday to discuss the terror attacks in Paris:
Sometime in the next two years, if Obama administration bureaucrats get their way, public housing tenants who smoke in their own apartments will face sanctions, fines and perhaps even eviction. The proposed policy is deeply flawed. However, those who oppose it—as many conservatives will…
Alabama governor Robert Bentley is refusing to allow Syrian refugees to relocate to Alabama.
Democrats have won votes by alleging that Republican positions amount to a "war on women." Yet politicians and pundits are now saying that a constellation of liberal policies favored by Democrats, on issues ranging from entitlements and healthcare to education and the economy, constitutes a war on…
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the French and Indian War had just ended, and Britain’s Parliament was determined to find some way to maintain a standing army, to avoid putting 1,500 socially well-connected officers out of work. Their solution was to keep the Army in North America stationed as a…
Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, my friend Ahmad Chalabi would often carry fat tomes about America’s occupations of Germany and Japan. An Iraqi exile after 1958 who lived mainly in London and Georgetown and maintained an off-and-on, love-hate relationship with Western intelligence agencies, he…
A year ago, the Louisiana Democratic party seemed as dead as its allegedly habitual voters from New Orleans cemeteries. Yet with a governor’s race quickening to its November 21 conclusion, Republican senator David Vitter is proving the Democrats’ greatest necromancer.
Generally speaking, The Weekly Standard is from the Edith Piaf school of second thoughts. We don’t have many. And when we do, we keep quiet about them. As the great chanteuse put it: Non, je ne regrette rien.
At the end of this month representatives of some 200 nations will gather in Paris for the opening of a United Nations-sponsored conclave to prevent the cataclysm that President Barack Obama, backed by the moral authority of Pope Francis, believes will befall the world if we do not slow the pace of…
Sioux City, Iowa
Rummaging around the other evening in a box of magazines and newspaper clippings with my byline, I stumbled upon the November 1975 issue of a journal called the Alternative: An American Spectator. Mindful, as always, of capricious mortality, I have lately been subtracting from the volume of paper…
As gaffes go, it was an especially amusing one for a woman who has thus far been caught with 671 instances of classified information appearing in her personal email. “Earlier today I announced that as president I will take steps to ‘ban the box,’ so former presidents won’t have to declare their…
Jeremy Black’s previous book, Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures, is a sparkling defense of the legitimacy and utility of counterfactual history—of what ifs—and the best single work on its subject available. He turns here to a not unrelated, and equally weighty and vexing, issue:…
The media are cooing over the news that Medicare will reimburse doctors $86 for half-hour consultations about the kind of treatment patients would—or would not—want should they become incapacitated. Such coverage was slated to be part of Obamacare, but was dropped after it became controversial when…
In May, the London Review of Books published a 10,000-word exposé by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on the killing of Osama bin Laden. It was widely read online, receiving “more than two million page-views,” according to an editor’s note inserted at the bottom. While Hersh’s account…
At a White House ceremony on November 12, President Obama will award the Medal of Honor to retired Army captain Florent Groberg. When the president fastens the medal’s light-blue ribbon behind Groberg’s neck, Obama will be doing more than honoring a single American hero. He will be reaffirming what…
In recent years, the Museum of Modern Art has seemed to have a target splattered across its ever-expanding façade—and not the artsy sort of target depicted by Jasper Johns. From all corners of the art world, critics have shown up with their BB guns, which they mistook for bazookas, and aimed them…
We are just a year from November 8, 2016, and the election that will largely determine the fate of Obamacare, and the news isn’t good for President Obama’s centerpiece legislation. Premiums continue to rise, doctor and hospital networks continue to shrink, Americans continue to balk at buying…
After Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) delivered his maiden speech on the Senate floor last week, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sent a text of his address to every Republican senator. This was unusual. McConnell rarely does anything quite like this.
Every few years in the Northeast, biologist John Cooley gets famous—because he’s the man who discovered the mating secrets of one of the insect world’s weirdest and most-publicized species: Magicicada septendecim, the 17-year cicada. True to their name, and unlike the bottle-green “annual” cicadas…
The fallout from CNBC’s Republican debate continues, and it’s confounding the journalistic establishment. At first, it was easy for the media to acknowledge the obvious. Even ThinkProgress, the house organ for the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, published an article calling the…
London
When it comes to anniversaries, the publishing industry usually resembles distant relatives, readiest with gifts that are redundant or farcical. Look no further than 2013’s bandolier of useless insights into the Kennedy assassination. The recent centenary of another assassination, at Sarajevo,…
There used to be a theory in the newspaper business, to which The Scrapbook wholeheartedly subscribes, that when two publications merged—say an afternoon daily with a weekday tabloid—the new hybrid publication would veer toward the lowest common denominator. That is to say, the new paper would more…
CNBC defends its performance at the last Republican debate by saying that candidates should be able to answer tough questions. Indeed they should. So, using the format of the CNBC questions to Republicans, here are some tough questions to ask Democrats at the next debate:
If you’re a connoisseur of ghost stories you are probably aware that the best reading experiences take the form of individual, pithy narratives rather than book-length efforts. This is true for almost all of the masters, from M. R. James to Henry James, Charles Dickens to Saki, Nathaniel Hawthorne…
Last week was one of those quiet Election Days where, on the surface, nothing much happened. But the “nothing much” might actually be something. We may have seen voters begin to pump the brakes on runaway liberalism.
Where do poems exist, in the voice or on the page? Surely the answer is “both,” though the page might be best likened to a musical score. It greatly guides our understanding of the piece, but the full life of the thing is in the playing. W. H. Auden (following Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch) famously…
Florida senator and GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio said on Sunday that the Paris terrorist attacks underscored why the United States can't admit more Syrian refugees. "We won't be able to take more refugees. It's not that we don't want to, it's that we can't. Because there's no way to…
It wasn’t much of a debate. This might have been because of the scheduling. Everybody ought to have something better to do on Saturday night than argue over the correct level of the minimum wage. Also, the atrocity in Paris hung over the proceedings, making the words of the candidates seem even…
Former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke said Sunday that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a much greater threat to the United States than al Qaeda ever was.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the November 16, 2015 issue.
During the Democratic debate Saturday night, Hillary Clinton said that ISIS "cannot be contained, it must be defeated." She also said, not once but twice, that this "cannot be an American fight" (while adding, "although American leadership is essential").
Since the terrorist attacks in Paris Friday that killed more than 120 people and injured hundreds more, world leaders from President Barack Obama to newly elected Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, and from U.K. prime minister David Cameron to German chancellor Angela Merkel, have expressed…
At tonight's CBS debate, the topic of Hillary Clinton's campaign donations from Wall Street came up as a question as to whether she was "beholden" to them as a result.
During Saturday night's Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton was asked about bringing in Syrian refugees.
The day after the terror attacks in Paris, Hillary Clinton refused to use the term "radical Islam." Clinton's refusal came tonight at a Democratic presidential primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa:
During Saturday night's Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders was asked if he still believes "the greatest threat to national security [is] climate change." Sanders said it was, and then criticized Hillary Clinton's foreign policy and support for the Iraq war.
Politico reports that the Bernie Sanders campaign fought an attempt by CBS—the network hosting tonight's Democratic debate—to focus more on foreign policy, due to yesterday's terrorist attacks in Paris. The suggestion by CBS occurred during a conference call with the three campaigns participating…
On Friday night as the Paris terrorist attacks were underway, Kentucky senator Rand Paul criticized Florida senator Marco Rubio for wanting to spend more money on national defense:
As a committed, long-standing Twitter detractor, I’ve exhaustively bashed the social networking site for all imaginable crimes, and even unimaginable ones. But through the gift of hindsight, I admit giving Twitter short-shrift in one department: it tends to work like they say old age does,…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the attacks in Paris, and whether they will shape tonight's Democratic debate.
Here's the most compelling and powerful reaction I've read so far to the attacks in Paris, by Mark Steyn, "The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates."
The Department of Homeland Security says there is no threat of a terrorist attack like the one in France happening immediately in America.
President Obama condemned tonight's terror attack in France in a statement he delivered from the White House:
Amherst Uprising—"a collective of students on campus who came together as a result of the sit-In organized in Frost Library on 11/12/15"—has delivered demands to their university president. Number five on their list is pretty illustrative how far off the deep end these student protesters are…
The tensions at Yale and Mizzou are spreading. In response to student protests, the Dean of Students at Claremont McKenna resigned yesterday. The Claremont Independent, a center-right journal at Claremont McKenna College, has weighed in on the controversy with a long editorial headlined, "We…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on The Self-Destruction of the American University.
The last non-farms payroll report pretty much sealed the deal in the minds of Fed watchers everywhere. We had, at last, achieved the desired degree of inflation. Rates would be going up. Probably in December.
It's a little hard to find underneath the bright banners advertising football conference schedules, field hockey scores, and special video clips from recent games in a half-dozen different sports, but at the bottom of NCAA.com is a small menu entitled “About the NCAA,” which takes you to NCAA.org…
A thought-provoking email in response to my editorial, "The Self-Destruction of the American University:"
If Donald Trump supporters haven’t abandoned him yet, there’s little reason to believe they’ll do so now. But it’s worth laying out a slice of what it is they’re defending, what it is they’re excusing, and what it is they’re encouraging. Let’s review the past 72 hours of crazy with Donald Trump.
President Obama does not believe ISIS is getting stronger. At least, that's what he said this morning in an interview that aired on ABC News:
From Hong Kong to Harvard, erasing history has become a necessity. In the Chinese territory, it is the authorities in Beijing who want to eliminate any memory of the past; in Harvard Square, it is the Law School students. In Hong Kong, memories of its colonial past cannot be missed: the harbor and…
Why is it so hard to figure out what Ted Cruz actually believes should be done about illegal immigration? When the Texas senator, through the help of radio host Laura Ingraham, zeroed in on Marco Rubio's involvement drafting and supporting the Gang of 8's comprehensive immigration reform plan in…
What kind of skills might be essential for someone to be head of a Federal Reserve Regional Bank? If your response is a basic knowledge of monetary policy and a deep understanding of financial markets you are mistaken: The answer is, apparently, experience at Goldman Sachs. The appointment of…
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Right to Rise, a super PAC set up by Jeb Bush, has produced but not yet aired a TV ad attacking Marco Rubio as unelectable because of his pro-life stance. Rubio said in an August debate that he "never advocated" for exceptions to abortion restrictions in…
Speaking on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Thursday, Ted Cruz attacked Marco Rubio for the Florida senator's involvement in the Gang of 8 comprehensive immigration reform plan. Without mentioning Rubio by name, Cruz condemned the Gang of 8’s plan to amnesty illegal immigrants while contrasting it with…
This week, Ruben Kihuen, a Democrat running for Nevada's 4th Congressional District, complained about wealthy and elite members of Congress while speaking at a Fight for $15 rally in Las Vegas.
In 1990’s classic The Matrix, the lead character realizes that the world he thought he knew was false, and that the truth about his society was being hidden by a hostile power. Many conservatives have a similarly Matrix-like moment in their intellectual development, that moment when they realize…
As much as one loves Bob Dylan, it is always best to resist the temptation to write about him. He is a slippery fish, who is routinely put-off by the industrial-level attempts to access his soul through the interpretation of his lyrics. And if Dylan makes albums—at the rate of almost one a year—as…
The recent E. coli outbreak that shut down 43 locations of the Chipotle chain in Washington state and Oregon reminds us of the downsides of organic. For in the push to rid our food of, among other things, preservatives, we tend to forget that the whole point of these additives was to, well,…
The Germans are angry with the Greeks for retiring at age 50 and counting on Germans to keep working until they are 65 so as to have enough cash to lend to Greece. The French are angry with the Germans for demanding such harsh and humiliating terms from the Greeks in return for a few billion more…
CNN's Jeff Zeleny reported this morning that there are questions whether Hillary Clinton actually tried to join the Marines. Clinton has made the claim since at least 1994, and recently repeated it this week in New Hampshire.
The process of winnowing the Republican presidential field to a few candidates is beginning to take its toll, though the first actual voting won’t occur until February.
Donald Trump's newly released book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, will debut next week as #5 on the New York Times bestseller list. Trump's book hit shelves November 3.
The president of Purdue University has sent a campus-wide email reminding students and faculty of the school's commitment to its "shared values" of being a "welcoming, inclusive, and discrimination-free community" while also remaining "steadfast in preserving academic freedom and individual…
There were a few weird moments at the debate last night, but none was stranger than the crowd reaction when John Kasich and Jeb Bush were talking about immigration. Both were unapologetically pro-amnesty. Neither bothered to make concessions about how problematic the breakdown of the rule of law is…
Just before the Republican presidential candidates went on stage Tuesday night for the fourth debate, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will deploy "strike systems capable of penetrating any missile defenses." He was specifically talking about the U.S. defensive systems planned for Europe that…
Pop quiz: Was the percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born higher in 1860, 1880, 1920, or on July 1, 2015? If you answered “2015,” you’re right. The portion of the U.S. population that is foreign-born is now 13.5 percent, surpassing even the tallies for 1860 (13.2 percent), 1880…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer John McCormack on the Fox Business Network debate last night, and the performances by Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz
President Eisenhower’s Commission on Veterans’ Pensions–the Bradley Commission—voiced concern in 1956 that if exclusive emphasis was placed on granting generous post-service benefits to prospective soldiers, then military service would become a mere negotiated economic relationship between the…
One of the big problems with media "fact checkers" is the presumption of expertise that the reporter doesn't actually have. Sitting around googling whenever a politician opens his or her mouth often means a rush to judgment, and the results can be embarassing. Last night, Politico Pro sent out the…
From Kate Davidson of the Wall Street Journal, we learn of one more reason to hope for a return to four percent growth and generally good economic times. Seems that:
The Center for American Progress (CAP), one of the largest and most influential liberal think tanks in Washington, recently extended an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He spoke there yesterday, and the New York Times write-up notes that Netanyahu "project[ed] a benevolent…
Donald Trump says he helped out his Republican rival Jeb Bush at Tuesday night's debate in Milwaukee. In an interview with Morning Joe Wednesday, host Joe Scarborough asked the reality TV star how he could unify the GOP after saying harsh things about Bush and other Republicans.
Milwaukee
Maybe he is the Republican Obama after all. Like the outgoing president, Florida senator Marco Rubio is charismatic, self-assured, and intelligent, as his performance in Tuesday night’s debate displayed. Alas, also like the president, Senator Rubio harbors an anti-intellectual streak, one that is…
Milwaukee
At last, a debate that lived up to its billing. The Fox Business Network promised this would be about economic policy, and not about fantasy football, or personalities, and its panelists delivered. Despite an occasional barb, including a neat put-down of Donald Trump by Carly Fiorina, we actually…
Tuesday night’s fourth Republican primary debate, held in Milwaukee, did little to change the dynamics of the presidential race.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on tonight's Fox Business Network debate.
During tonight's Republican presidential debate, Carly Fiorina went on an extended foreign policy riff:
It’s a rare debate where no one comes out feeling like they won. Some thoughts on how the field performed:
Jeb Bush appears to be drawing some inspiration from the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. Indeed, at tonight's debate Bush ripped off an attack line Romney deployed against Obama in 2012.
During Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate, Marco Rubio articulated his disagreements with increasing the minimum wage, and explained his alternative ideas.
If you were just listening to Chris Christie’s answers Tuesday night, you might have thought he was debating Hillary Clinton. The Republican governor of New Jersey used his demotion to the undercard debate in Milwaukee to focus not on the other three low-polling Republicans on stage but instead on…
Going in, Chris Christie was the guy to watch at the undercard debate. He’s moving in New Hampshire, he handled his relegation with grit, and people are finally starting to see what a talent he is.
The Marco Rubio campaign is predicting the Florida senator will deliver a knockout punch to former Florida governor Jeb Bush in Tuesday night's debate, according to one reporter at the Fox Business Network. Charles Gasparino said he's hearing confidence from the Rubio camp.
Tonight’s debates on Fox Business should be notable for a number of reasons:
The New York Times reports that the "cash-rich group aiding Jeb Bush’s White House run has filmed a provocative video casting his rival Marco Rubio as ultimately unelectable because of his hard-line stand against abortion."
A man from the audience at a Hillary Clinton event said he'd like to strangle Carly Fiorina
The super PAC supporting former Florida governor Jeb Bush for president told the New York Times that it plans on using its resources to hit Florida senator Marco Rubio over his pro-life record as well as missed votes in the Senate. The Times reported Tuesday that Right to Rise, which has raised…
Think of it as a pistol shot kicking off the labor and employment debates of the next decade.
It seems like the Christmas season starts a little earlier each year. A couple years back I was shocked when Costco put out Christmas items the week after Halloween; now the Christmas decorations are on sale weeks before trick-or-treating. And this year, even the War on Christmas has come early.
Democratic senator Tim Kaine admitted this morning on national TV that the U.S. has no strategy in Syria:
According to U.S. News rankings, Yale is the third best university in America. Tuition nears $48,000 per year—a high price, but one many believe is worth paying to become a great young thinker, whose ideas will move the world forward. But following two separate, childish student outbursts at Yale,…
Reports indicate that Jeb Bush may ramp up his attacks on Marco Rubio in the coming days. So Rubio is responding by releasing a video of Bush praising him.
At a campaign event last night, Hillary Clinton bragged about something she does not usually mention: her votes for a border fence to keep illegal immigrants out of America.
Morton Kondracke fired off a letter to Powerline Blog, criticizing a New York Times review of the book he recently co-authored with TWS executive editor Fred Barnes: Jack Kemp: The Bleeding-Heart Conservative Who Changed America.
Jeb Bush's campaign has long emphasized the importance of the 12 primary contests on March 1—nicknamed the "SEC primary" because several states have schools in the NCAA's Southeastern Conference. Bush has even campaigned at SEC football games, calling the appearances "SEC Tailgating with…
At some point, the most obvious explanation is rope-a-dope.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the Ben Carson campaign, the media's coverage of it, and how Carson is winning.
You quit or we don’t play. That is essentially what dozens of players on the University of Missouri football team told the president of the university. They had lost four straight games, five of their last six, including a 31-13 home loss to Mississippi State on Saturday night. But they won this…
While she opposed marijuana decriminalization during her first run for the presidency in 2007, according to Politico, candidate Hillary Clinton now provides support for so-called “medical marijuana.” She attributes her decision to “medical research,” which leads her further to seek a liberalization…
The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol features Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt:
A chorus of Democrats and activists are raising hackles about the potential of Republican policy riders being added to a year-end omnibus spending bill. Policy riders (or “limitation riders”) are the opposite of earmarks. Where the now-extinct earmark required money to be used on a certain project,…
Bernie Sanders says the reason Hillary Clinton has so many endorsments is because she's the "candidate of the establishment."
Every Democrat in the 2016 field has complained about ridesharing services like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar. But their campaigns pay for plenty of Uber rides.
You readers flatter me. You send me emails and letters asking me to review certain movies you’ve seen because you want to know what I have to say about them. At times these missives make me feel guilty, because I know I’m going to let you down. Because it’s often the case that you want to hear my…
In March 2003, as the 1st Marine Division raced up Mesopotamia toward Baghdad, two Marines-turned-writers—Bing West and retired Major General Ray “E-Tool” Smith—accepted a helicopter ride from the assistant division commander, John F. Kelly. Though zipping over the battlefield at 150 feet was…
On October 27, the House of Representatives moved to impeach the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, John Koskinen. It may seem odd that Koskinen is being punished since he wasn’t commissioner when the IRS scandal broke two years ago. But make no mistake, Koskinen is a worthy candidate…
In 1988, Robert Tappan Morris, then a graduate student at Cornell University, decided to write a computer program to measure the size of the still-nascent Internet. Morris’s effort, a cleverly written bit of code that exploited security weaknesses, quickly spread through the computer network,…
In a recent interview with Politico, Al Gore made a pretty remarkable claim about climate change: “All the predictions of the scientists have come true in spades, except it’s now abundantly obvious that they erred on the conservative side.” Whatever side you come down on in the climate change…
She seemed more curious than frightened, the doe-eyed . . . doe, I suppose, and we studied each other for a long moment or two. She, calm in a farmer’s field, looking over the fence line. And me, unmoving in the wreck, staring back at her through the shattered glass.
The World Health Organization’s announcement last week that bacon and processed meats cause cancer may well cause an untold number of premature deaths, and The Scrapbook has a sneaking suspicion that the political overseers at the WHO would be fine with that outcome.
Paul Ryan was a waiter at Tortilla Coast, a Capitol Hill restaurant, when he first encountered Jack Kemp. Ryan had worked for Senator Bob Kasten (R-Wis.), who lost his race for reelection in 1992. Ryan was killing time in Washington before going to graduate school in economics.
Last week, the Obama White House moved to ensure Hezbollah’s ability to point 100,000 missiles at Israel. That’s not how they would describe it, of course. But it was the Obama administration—as U.S. officials are quietly letting on—and not Russia that invited Iran to participate in talks in Vienna…
On the international music scene, conductor Andris Nelsons is clearly on a roll. He has come a long way from the days when he played trumpet in the Latvian National Opera Orchestra. In the past season, he completed his contract with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) and…
I’m a kind of poster child for bottle-feeding instead of breastfeeding. I’m a first-born, and my mother, bless her heart, decided to nurse me from her own nipples instead of the more “scientific” formula that was the middle-class aspirational standard of the 1940s. (Breastfeeding was strictly for…
Why do some authors stay famous, while others fade from history’s roll of honor? When it was published in 1811, Mary Brunton’s racy novel Self-Control was a runaway bestseller. Although its theme was moral fortitude, it was wildly exciting. An ardent suitor, Hargrave, kidnapped the heroine, Laura…
Ben Carson remains in the presidential race notwithstanding the conventional wisdom that the retired neurosurgeon and first-time-candidate-for-any-office wouldn’t last this long. Indeed, the most recent polls show Carson leading Donald Trump in Iowa, which kicks off the presidential primary season…
Pope Francis’s synod on the family adjourned on Sunday, October 25, after an acrimonious three weeks. This assembly of bishops, like a similar one last year, was convened because the pope is interested in changing Catholic teaching on divorce, remarriage, and, to a lesser extent, homosexuality.
If I were dismissed from my college faculty for writing for The Weekly Standard, the American Association of University Professors, founded in 1915, would be on my side. It wouldn’t matter that, as seems likely, many of its 45,000 members loathe TWS and all that it stands for. After all, the AAUP…
The mainstream media, liberal pundits, and even some conservative analysts gave Hillary Clinton high marks for her performance at the October 22 hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, and they scored congressional Republicans negatively. The day was widely deemed a huge win for Clinton…
Overcoming deep personal ambivalence and a battery of attacks from conservative complainers outside Congress, Paul Ryan became the 54th speaker of the House on October 29, 2015. To call this improbable understates the case. Not primarily because Ryan is young (he’s 45) or because Ryan is first a…
Think back to the Ebola chaos of last year. Nobody except the caregivers came away looking good—not the White House, not the Department of Health and Human Services, not the World Health Organization, not Congress, not most of the media.
In the Second World War, flying in a Boeing B-17—the iconic Flying Fortress—was dangerous beyond belief. Of the 12,731 bombers produced between 1937 and 1945, 4,754 were lost or written off in the course of operations, a loss rate of 37 percent. Ten Americans, the B-17’s standard crew, risked death…
Last week, while Americans were watching the World Series and John Harwood’s presidential debate buffoonery, the Chinese government did something interesting: It killed the one-child policy.
I see no reason why the decay of culture should not proceed much further, and why we may not even anticipate a period, of some duration, of which it will be possible to say that it will have no culture. Notes Toward the Definition of Culture —T. S. Eliot My friend Hilton Kramer, the art critic of…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the November 9, 2015 issue.
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley is not just going after Hillary Clinton. He's also turning his fire on Bernie Sanders, the self-described socialist.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section from the November 2, 2015 issue.
To the eye of Charles Murray, the situation is grim—grimmer than you realize. Our government is increasingly corrupt. The legal system is lawless. The regulatory agencies possess tyrannical levels of power. Murray, social scientist and author of Losing Ground and Coming Apart, no longer believes…
Lift-off. That’s the conclusion to which observers jumped when the government announced on Friday that the economy added 271,000 jobs in October. And that the August and September figures have been revised upward by 12,000. And that the unemployment rate fell to 5 percent. And that discouraged…
Politico has made significant changes to a report claiming 2016 Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson "fabricated" his story about being offered full scholarship to attend West Point, and there is nothing in the story to indicate that the article has been edited.
It has been a tough few weeks for Bernie Sanders. Before the debate, his numbers were soaring, his crowds were growing, and there was a palpable and almost arrogant sense of confidence among his supporters and inside his organization where they talked magnanimously about considering Hillary…
In Ben Carson's bestselling book, Gifted Hands, he recounts a tale about how as a top ROTC student in Detroit growing up he had an opportunity to meet General William Westmoreland. Apparently, the meeting went well. According to Carson, "Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point."
A flurry of anniversaries this month is a reminder of the importance of conservative magazines and journals in American intellectual life and in our political history.
President Obama announced today to much fanfare (and to much angst on the right) that he is killing the proposed KeystoneXL pipeline, which would transport Canadian tar sands oil through the United States. But as much as he would like to claim the mantle of environmentalism (this is the man who…
This week, the Department of Education ruled that public schools must grant transgender students unrestricted access to the bathrooms, locker rooms, and open shower facilities of their preference.
Reuters is reporting:
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the state of the GOP race to be the party's 2016 presidential nominee.
Hillary Clinton can be defeated in 2016, writes Matthew Continetti at the Washington Free Beacon. Here's an excerpt:
Following Jeb Bush's campaign reset, the former Florida governor has expanded on his new "fix it" theme. Bush is focusing on how his experience and ideas make him the best candidate to fix Washington, D.C.
On Thursday, Dusty Baker was introduced as the Washington Nationals' new manager. The 66-year-old former all-star outfielder was named manager of the year three times (1993, 1997, and 2000) with the San Francisco Giants (1993-2002), and then went on to lead the Chicago Cubs (2003-2006), and the…
The U.S. Navy is stretched thin, especially when it comes to aircraft carriers and as Richard Sisk writes at Military.com:
An NBCUniversal executive, Joe Waz, is hosting a fundraiser today for Hillary Clinton.
The Pentagon is sending several F-15s to Turkey, as David Axe writes at the Daily Beast. Their mission will not be to conduct strikes against targets on the ground. They are designed for “air-to-air combat” which in this case means:
Peggy Noonan’s new volume The Time of Our Lives brings together some of the columnist’s greatest hits. She writes about the peaceful 1990s, the shock of September 11, what it’s like to write a major speech for a president in time of crisis (in this case, Ronald Reagan’s Challenger speech), and many…
A video of New Jersey governor and Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie movingly addressing a New Hampshire town hall gathering on the subject of drug addiction has garnered a lot of attention this week, with many surprisingly pleased with his remarks. Christie has set a goal of holding…
According to a new poll released by Gallup on Thursday, Donald Trump is the most unpopular presidential candidate in either party: 56 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump, while just 34 percent have a favorable view of him.
Bernie Sanders, who has bemoaned America's vast deodorant selection, is now being featured on a patterned shirt. The Des Moines Register reports that the clothing shop Raygun has begun selling this shirt, covered entirely covered by Bernie Sanders's face:
The Office of the United States Trade Representative has finally released the full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Bernie Sanders is no longer "sick and tired" of Hillary Clinton's "damn emails."
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Jay Cost reading the tea leaves on Hillary Clinton's latest poll numbers.
The Martin O'Malley campaign has released this video, hitting Hillary Clinton for flip-flopping on gun policy:
Senator Ben Sasse spoke on the Senate floor for the first time yesterday.
Jeb Bush's campaign reboot is in full swing, as a video on the former Florida governor's official YouTube page indicates. The normally quiet Bush began shouting at a recent event that "the president has to lead."
Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and pal of the Clintons, has taken it on the chin again.
Black voters have long been aligned with the Democratic party. In the Barack Obama era, the alignment has been closer than ever, with 2012 black turnout higher and more Democratic than ever. If Hillary Clinton hopes to win the White House, she'll need to get similar numbers to Obama among black…
For 16 years, the Bowl Championship Series focused fans’ and reporters’ attention on teams’ actual success in winning games against strong opponents. Just over a year into the new Selection Committee era (in which 13 people determine which teams will be invited to a 4-team playoff), it’s clear…
Michelle Obama went to Qatar to give a speech on girls education. There, the first lady of the United States complained about growing up as a girl in America.
The leading Republican presidential candidate in donor and establishment support is down to just four percent of the vote in a new national poll. Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, is in a far fifth place in the latest Quinnipiac poll, getting four percent and trailing Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio,…
Texas senator Ted Cruz said the Rebel Alliance in George Lucas's Star Wars films are "unequivocally" the good guys. The Republican presidential candidate told THE WEEKLY STANDARD Tuesday evening the question over which side in the original three movies, the Rebels and the all-powerful Galactic…
New Jersey governor Chris Christie came out swinging against his rival for the GOP presidential nomination Marco Rubio Tuesday. In a Tuesday interview with radio host Laura Ingraham, Christie responded to Rubio's claim that the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program…
Ahmed Chalabi died Tuesday, at his home in Baghdad, without many honors. He had egged on the U.S. invasion in 2003 by circulating stories of Saddam’s nuclear facilities, wanting to be president of his old country. But when none were found, he became infamous in his new one instead.
A common conservative joke online is that if Tumblr were a country, it would look a lot like Sweden. Although some still see the Scandinavian nation as either a Christmas card full of blond-haired people listening to ABBA or a socialist paradise that America would be prudent to emulate, the truth…
Daniel Polisar, writing for Mosaic:
Part of former Florida governor Jeb Bush's fifth campaign reboot is, apparently, media training for the candidate. Gabriel Sherman at New York magazine reports the Bush campaign has hired Jon Kraushar to help improve the Republican's image:
Before it recedes entirely into the rearview mirror, it’s worth one last look at CNBC’s debate debacle (debatacle?) which was, as my buddy Michael Graham put it, a trainwreck into a dumpster fire.
Last week, the New York Times rolled out a petty and somewhat meanspirited editiorial against Chris Christie and the rest of the Republican field. The gist of it is that, by running for president, Christie isn't spending as much time at home working for New Jersey as he ought to:
CNN reports:
A tradition in the Senate required a newly elected member to wait a year or more before addressing his colleagues on the Senate floor. But that practice has been absent from the Senate for decades—until today.
President Obama’s hour-long conversation with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, published in two parts in the New York Review of Books, inspired responses that were so hyperbolic and adoring, it felt like 2008 all over again.
President Obama inserted himself into the 2016 Republican presidential primary last night in New York City.
A big part of liberal media bias is the insatiable need to create drama about any intra-party Republican disagreements, while downplaying or ignoring Democratic divisions. Even the most liberal media outlets agreed that last week's CNBC debate was a flaming dirigible, but when the Republican party…
This article originally appeared in the February 4, 2008 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD and is being published today in memory of Fred Thompson who passed away Sunday.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer John McCormack on the Bush / Rubio battle royale and whether a waning Bush candidacy can take life.
In January 2006, the actor and former senator Fred Thompson visited the offices of THE WEEKLY STANDARD to discuss the state of the Supreme Court, which was in the midst of filling a vacancy—Thompson had been providing advice to then-nominee Samuel Alito. It was an in-depth conversation about the…
Ralph Nader, man-splainer?
Mosaic has published a moving memoir, written by Czech Holocaust survivors, that's well worth reading. "As the war ends and she comes down from the mountains of Slovakia, a Jewish girl discovers that she can still be 'moved by something other than the mere struggle for existence,'" Mosaic says.
In January 2011, we at TWS had the notion that it would be good to defeat President Obama in 2012. And so in a blog post we asked the sensible question: " Wouldn't it be easier just to agree now on a Ryan-Rubio ticket, and save everyone an awful lot of time, effort, and money over the next year and…
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, coming off a poorly perceived debate performance last week and struggles in the polls, appeared in Tampa Monday morning to "reboot" his campaign. Bush will define this new campaign shakeup with a mantra that he wants to come to Washington to "fix it."
Last week, the women of The View made fun of Carly Fiorina's smile, calling it "demented" and suggesting a smiling Fiorina Halloween mask.
Hillary Clinton always makes time for friends at the State Department—especially those who have money.
A former top aide to Marco Rubio has come out in support of Jeb Bush, according to a report published at floridapolitics.com.
The continuing controversy over Planned Parenthood’s sale of tissue and organs from aborted fetuses for research is eerily reminiscent of a Soviet disinformation campaign during the 1980s that accused the United States of kidnapping and killing babies and children in the Third World in order to…
Of the making of books about Franklin D. Roosevelt, there is no end—and nearly all of them are admiring, often to the point of outright adoration. It started with the memoirists, most of whom took the utmost care to paper over Roosevelt’s flaws in their obsequious haste to document their own…
In August 2012, two rapes by unknown assailants were reported at Harvard University, sending the school into crisis. Police cruisers idled around the campus; uniformed and plainclothes officers came out in force. Students were advised not to walk alone. A member of the undergraduate council called…
As we approach the third Republican presidential debate, conservatives should consider what they expect the next president to accomplish.
I’m a sophisticated guy. A deep thinker, even. Shallowness’s scourge, you might say.
Last week, Senate and House Democrats threw a party to celebrate the adoption day of Obama’s Iran deal. Ninety days after the White House signed the deal in Vienna, Obama directed the United States government to lift sanctions on Iran, the Democrats listened to a string ensemble in Washington, and…
‘Republicans in Turmoil!” “Chaos Confounds GOP Congressmen!!” “Catastrophic Conservative Crack-Up Imminent!!!” “Trump Likely GOP Nominee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
We hear endlessly these days from the left and the right that our political system is “broken.” The left’s principal complaint is that it is too hard to pass their desired legislation. Liberals pine for a parliamentary system, where the majority party in the legislature controls public policy. Our…
That Submission, the sixth work of fiction by the French provocateur Michel Houellebecq, was published in France on the day of the Charlie Hedbo assassinations feels like something out of a publicist’s morbid daydream. It considers a near-future in which the French Muslim Brotherhood finds common…
Hailed as the greatest scientist of his time, Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) had the tiniest handwriting I have ever seen. One of the most fascinating pages in Andrea Wulf’s new biography shows his lecture notes: a jumble of cards, envelopes, and scraps of paper, stacked on top of each other,…
The latest issue of National Affairs, The Scrapbook’s favorite quarterly magazine, has arrived, and it’s another winner. Among the highlights: Frederick M. Hess on Obama’s (lamentable) education record, our colleague Irwin M. Stelzer on antitrust concerns raised by hospital mergers, and Tevi Troy…
In the last 20 years, America’s political, media, and business establishments have done their best to rehabilitate the image of China’s Communist government. After all, there’s a lot of money to be made by playing nice with China and looking the other way when Beijing continues to routinely commit…
Republicans are in trouble. A significant bloc regards their congressional leaders—House speaker John Boehner, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, and their underlings—as enemies. A quarter or more of grassroots Republicans think Donald Trump should be president. And to make things worse,…
The Scrapbook’s expectations of student journalists are not super high (we were one once ourselves, and we had a lot to learn). So we’re always pleased when they rise to the occasion. One who did was Bryan Stascavage, a staff writer for the Wesleyan Argus, who published a column last month mildly…
Madrid
Richard Nixon visited Canada just once during his presidency. He’s also been dead 20 years. But he was about the only person to correctly call last week’s Canadian election.
Way back in the beginning of September, the media, and in particular STEM-obsessed, politically correct digital outlets, were abuzz with the story of a young Muslim “inventor” falling afoul of school authorities in the suburbs of Dallas, possibly owing to a zero-tolerance policy run amok, possibly…
Men who disrespect their beards are beginning to annoy me. On this all-important subject, I have a prejudiced perspective. Facial hair has swirled around my jaw (and upper lip) for almost 35 years. Granted, my look hasn’t been consistent. Lately, a lot of salt has spilled into the pepper. My fuzzy…
The same government that warned you off whole milk and urged you to load up on carbs may now be moving to protect you from the snares of fantasy sports wagering. And the people who worship at the temple of government believe this is the just and proper thing to do. Presumably they will put the same…
There is always a danger in bringing up C. S. Lewis in a conversation with people you do not know well. As a professor once told me, “most people either love him or hate him.” And sometimes the ones who hate him have not read him very well or deeply. When I proposed doing a thesis on him in…