January 2016

Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio need a last-minute charge to compete in Monday's Iowa Republican Caucus. Recent precedent shows that Cruz could overtake Donald Trump to capture first place. Rubio would need an historic surge to win — but he could at least be in the mix by making up ground similar…

Bernie Sanders is now calling Hillary Clinton's email scandal "a very serious issue."

The Ted Cruz campaign bus got stuck in Iowa mud and needed to be towed.

As mentioned previously, Brown-Forman is selling Southern Comfort to the Sazerac Company for $543.5 million. This ought to free up the Louisville, Kentucky-based liquor giant to focus on its flagship brands, namely, Woodford Reserve and Jack Daniel's. Indeed, last October Brown-Forman unveiled the…

Des Moines

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on what we can expect from tomorrow's Iowa caucuses: surprises.

Writing at the Washington Free Beacon, contributing editor Matthew Continetti squares recent columns by Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks.

Sioux City, Iowa

Turandot

The Des Moines Register, whose poll is generally regarded as the gold standard of Iowa polling, has released its final results before Monday’s Iowa caucuses. It finds Donald Trump in first place, with 28 percent support, and Ted Cruz in second, with 23 percent support. No one else is within a dozen…

Sioux City, Iowa

Johnston, Iowa

Sioux City, Iowa

My friends accuse me of having a fetish for hopeless causes that interest no one and have no hope of ever being accomplished. Which brings me to my plan for fixing the Pro Bowl.

Hillary Clinton might be the next George Washington. At least, that's what Clinton's campaign wants it supporters to believe.

Research from the polling firm Gallup has found that Donald Trump is the "most unpopular candidate" for president in either major party — both in this election and all the way back to 1992.

Emmetsburg, Iowa

There will certainly be a recession this year. Unless there won’t. That is the consensus view of economists. The bad news is that even the optimists are having difficulty explaining away the reams of incoming data, and that even the cheeriest of the bunch are predicting a no-to-low-growth outlook…

Nobody dominated the final pre-Iowa Republican debate, but it was a spirited affair that will likely affect the outcome of the caucuses. The questions from Fox News were a bit all over the place and sometimes seemed to be asked more from the perspective of the Obama White House than from that of…

Hillary Clinton wants classified information released to the public. In response to new reports on classified information in Clinton's emails, the campaign released this statement:

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said today that "based on what we know" it does not look like Hillary Clinton will be indicted. Earnest made the remarks the White House podium.

If Hillary loses the nomination to Bernie Sanders, longtime Clinton aide Doug Band has pledged to vote for Michael Bloomberg, should he run.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on Donald Trump's event last night in Iowa, and Trump's record with the veteran community.

Megyn Kelly is a good looking woman. I don't say this to objectify her, I say it because I have eyes. While it would be absurd not to notice this, that doesn't take away from the fact that she's certainly a capable broadcast journalist. I would not want to be in the position of having to answer…

Thank heavens for Ctrl+F, a reader's best friend in times of memory lapse and abject laziness. While scouring a transcript of about 19,000 words, it's also a legitimate research tool—particularly when the researcher has a hunch that the word he's looking for isn't mentioned too often.

Noam Chomsky is in the news this week because of his latest interview with Al-Jazeera's UpFront, which is set to air on Friday. But Chomsky, who is regarded by some as one of America's foremost leftist intellectuals, isn't discussing the "horrors" of U.S. foreign policy, as he normally might. This…

This morning on CNN, Alisyn Camerota said that journalists are scared to criticize Donald Trump.

Donald Trump's campaign manager predicted that Thursday night's GOP presidential debate on Fox News would only get "about 2 million" viewers because Trump refused to show up. In fact, "Fox News likely had 11 million to 13 million viewers for the debate," CNN's Brian Stelter reports.

Bloomberg's Mark Halperin reported this morning on MSNBC that the White House is buzzing about the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton. Halperin also said that the FBI will likely interview Clinton.

Jeb Bush will be in Iowa through the weekend. But on Monday, the day of the Iowa caucus, the former Florida governor will fly to New Hampshire to hold a town hall.

Hillary Clinton needs a dollar. Why? Because she's in the fight of her life to win Iowa, which will caucus on Monday, and New Hampshire.

Des Moines

Watching the Republican debate tonight, I couldn't help but think,

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on tonight's Fox News GOP debate.

With Donald Trump skipping the debate to consort with Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum (because he cares so very much about veterans), Ted Cruz had a golden opportunity to make a strong closing pitch to Iowa voters. He missed it.

The Frank Luntz focus group, which aired on Fox News after tonight's debate, called Marco Rubio the winner of the Republican debate.

Warby Parker is the most celebrated of the online optical shops upending the traditional eyeglass business. In a market where the average price for a pair of prescription glasses has been near $300, Warby Parker sells hipster-chic frames, complete with lenses, for around $100. Fast Company calls…

While things on college campuses are less chaotic and violent than they were a few months ago, make no mistake—sanity has not been restored. We got fresh evidence of that when the University of Oregon, in the middle of renovating their student center, debated removing a quotation from Martin Luther…

As Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott spoke with evident pride about how many times he’d sued the federal government. The total came to 31, and invariably the lawsuits challenged actions that Abbott believed violated federal statutes or the Constitution. Now, as Texas governor, he is no longer in…

There’s a great joke about acting. One actor says to another actor, Hey, I just got cast in Hamlet. The other actor says, I know this is embarrassing, but I've never read or seen it. What's it about? The first one says, It's about this guy, Gravedigger #2 .  .  .

Well, it’s about time. Trustees of Amherst College have banished the school's unofficial mascot, "Lord Jeff," a buffoonish, big-headed representation of the school's namesake, Lord Jeffery Amherst. A British general, during the French and Indian War Amherst signed off on a rudimentary sort of…

The old droll definition of an Argentine—an Italian who speaks Spanish, lives in a French house, and thinks he's an English gentleman—does not appear anywhere in Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City. James Gardner's history of the Argentine capital is a serious work that, inevitably, brings that…

Generally speaking, The Scrapbook adheres to the old Latin aphorism De mortuis nil nisi bonum (roughtly translated: Don’t speak ill of the dead). Our practice is to offer a fond farewell to people we admire and a dignified silence for those we don't. Which puts us in a quandary, of sorts, about an…

Meanwhile, at Harvard .  .  . We note that a frequent and valued contributor to these pages, Harvey C. Mansfield, has weighed in on the controversy there over the renaming of the House Masters (overseers, if you can forgive that word, of the college's undergraduate residences). Mansfield offered…

A sign of what might be called “progress" jogged some memories of battles fought. In reporting Governor Andrew Cuomo's nomination of a new chief to a state regulatory agency, the New York Times identified the appointee as being a litigator in "the white-shoe law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind," et al.…

Writing in 1920 of Algernon Swinburne, the appeal of whose enraptured lyricism was not self-evident to the generation that had survived the Great War, T. S. Eliot pronounced, in that marvelously authoritative tone of his, that "it is a question of some nicety to decide how much must be read of any…

Stephen Silverman and Raphael Silver offer a boisterous, colorful history of New York’s Catskill Mountains, but like the tummlers of yesteryear, once they depart, it's hard to remember what the noise was about. The Catskills have always been at the edge of the American experience—a hinterland of…

When a Republican leader went to vote in his Dallas neighborhood on May 1, 1976, he was in for a huge surprise. It was the day of the Republican presidential primary in Texas—Ronald Reagan versus President Gerald Ford—and a long line of voters extended outside the polling place. And he didn't…

The Weekly Standard looks forward to the 58th swearing-in of a president of the United States on January 20, 2017. The oath-taking is the heart of the occasion. It’s what makes the winner of the presidential election legally and constitutionally able to execute the office of the president. All the…

My combined roles as television couch potato and language snob have not been easy on me. What I most watch on television is sports and news, with a fair amount of DVDs, these chiefly of English detective stories. Much of this television watching is done in the evening, when, as they say about…

Noel Malcolm, senior research fellow at All Souls College Oxford, is a polyglot and polymath. Skillful with sources in Albanian, Romanian, Serbian, modern Turkish, Italian, and other languages, he is probably best known for books produced during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, Bosnia: A Short History…

Even before Vice President Joe Biden met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara last week, the Turks were displeased. The day before, Biden had granted interviews only to opposition media and slammed the government for stepping on freedom of speech. “That's not the kind of example that needs…

A strange period has now passed into history. Captivated by a presidential campaign in 2008, Americans by the millions came to believe that a new leader would be able to produce more than a transformed society and an era of world peace. Politics could be extended beyond its ordinary boundaries and…

Texas senator Ted Cruz addressed "the elephant not in the room" to kick off Thursday night's FOX News-Google debate, doing his best mimicry of Donald Trump in his opening answer.

Robbie Mook, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, is raising the alarm: Bernie Sanders is doing very well.

If several Donald Trump’s Republican rivals have any thoughts about the GOP frontrunner's decision to skip Thursday's debate in Iowa to hold a fundraiser for his charity foundation, they aren't speaking up about it.

Donald Trump is skipping tonight's debate because, according to Trump, Fox News and Megyn Kelly have not been nice to him. Trump plans on holding a rally to benefit veterans instead, but The Federalist reports that Trump is funneling all donations for veterans to his personal Donald J Trump…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on next Monday's Iowa caucuses.

The Republican presidential primaries have been chaotic thus far. And the chaos could continue.

Harmony Daws was recently appointed president of the Oregon Right to Life board of directors. She works at a cleaning business in Portland, and informed her boss of her new position. Her boss did not take it well:

There's one Republican candidate clearly ahead in New Hampshire, according to a new poll. And there are a lot of them slugging it out for second.

Is this the greatest fight night ever? In a word: Yes. We're less than eight hours away from the debate kickoff and we don't even know for sure if the Republican frontrunner will be on stage.

On Thursday, Bernie Sanders released a note from his doctor that attested to his good health.

Vincent "Buddy" Cianci, the scandal-plagued long time mayor of Providence, Rhode Island has died. He was 74. A Republican-turned-Independent, Cianci had recently proposed to his girlfriend.

Is it safe to travel to North Korea? (Let's leave the question of ethics aside; that's more open and shut. No, it is not ethical to travel to North Korea.) The Associated Press delved into the question this week, in light of the ongoing detention of an American college student who has "vacationing"…

‎Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who has expressed concerns about Donald Trump's commitment to conservatism and the Constitution, campaigned for Ted Cruz in neighboring Iowa on Tuesday and followed that up by campaigning on Wednesday for Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. In between campaign stops, Sasse…

A new ad from the Our Principles PAC accuses Donald Trump of backing amnesty. The ad says amnesty is "big money for himself" and suggests that conservatives cannot trust Trump.

Hillary Clinton left Iowa to attend a fundraiser last night with an investment mogul. The fundraiser took place in Philadelpia.

West Des Moines, IA

Donald Trump says he's skipping the final debate before the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night because he's upset with Fox News and debate moderator Megyn Kelly. Trump will instead hold a "special event to benefit veterans organizations" in Iowa, according to a campaign press release. But the event…

ABC News reporter Liz Kreutz took a tour of Hillary Clinton's Iowa campaign headquarters in Des Moines Wednesday. With camera in tow, Kreutz discovered a group of foreign exchange students from China working in a back room as volunteers for the campaign.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump said in May that he would appear in all the Republican primary debates to hammer home his message.

In drinking news (the most important news, let's face it), Brown-Forman is selling that American classic, Southern Comfort, to the Sazerac Company for $543.5 million (and throwing in Tuaca, an Italian liqueur, as part of the deal). For despite the increase in U.S. consumption of whiskey and…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with Associate Editor Ethan Epstein and Deputy Online Editor Jim Swift on whether Donald will show up at tomorrow's Fox News Debate in Iowa.

Lavishly celebrated Atlantic scribe Ta-Nehisi Coates has reproached Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on separate occasions in the last week. The New York Times wrote about one and not the other. Guess which.

A new Iowa poll finds Donald Trump with a strong seven point lead, less than one week from caucus day. Ted Cruz is in second and Marco Rubio is in third, the poll finds.

Istanbul

For all the times Donald Trump has maligned an opponent, he's been complimentary of other people on at least a few occasions. Take Hillary Clinton and Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump may have the media attention, the lead in the national and early-state polls, and increasingly the air of inevitability as the Iowa caucuses approach. But one thing he doesn’t have, says a top advisor for Ted Cruz, is the ability to get enough supporters to caucus on February 1, many…

It's been news in recent days at left-leaning organs like The Nation that in the waning days of the Obama administration, there are still dark, cobwebbed sections of public law that need to be cleansed of their misogyny.

Bernie Sanders has a private meeting today at the White House with President Barack Obama. The meeting, which is scheduled not to exceed 45 minutes, will take place in the Oval Office.

Over the weekend, Stephen Hayes pointed out that the Jeb Bush campaign has basically “cleared the way for Donald Trump" by spending an inordinate sum against Marco Rubio. Yesterday, from John McCormack, we saw the extent to which this effort has gone—an attack on Rubio's use of a Florida GOP credit…

Bill Kristol joined David Gergen and Katrina Pierson on CNN Tuesday night to react to Donald Trump's announcement he will not participate in Thursday's debate in Iowa. Host Erin Burnett suggested many Republican primary voters might look favorably on Trump's decision, which would show he is…

Today, a group of pro-life women leaders mailed Iowans a letter warning that Donald Trump is an unacceptable choice for pro-life voters. They write that Trump's record and his statements about abortion, as well as his demeaning treatment of women, give them grave concerns:

Tweet

Istanbul

Retired Navy Admiral and Senate hopeful Joe Sestak was asked recently at the Pennsylvania Press Club Luncheon about the recent catpure of 10 U.S. Navy sailors by the government of Iran.

Yesterday, in the boss's newsletter Kristol Clear (sign up here for free!) we sent out a new twist on our traditional newsletter straw poll: A prediction market game.

It has been seven years since the election of our first black president. Seven years since a supposed post-partisan (even post-racial) era was to begin.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has spent the last number of years writing on the Koch brothers. She's done her best to cast the two funders of libertarian and conservative causes as a shadowy threat to democracy, even though numerous holes have been poked in her reporting.

Texas senator Ted Cruz has infamously attacked Donald Trump for supposedly embodying "New York values."

In the days leading up to the Iowa Caucus, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has taken his message to the Internet for a last-minute blitz with a series of web videos. (Including even a how-to for first time caucus goers.)

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the forthcoming pre-caucus GOP debate, why the Donald isn't inevitable, and why Tea Partiers should oppose Trump.

"Finally, somebody whiter than us!" So must have cheered the brain trust at Saturday Night Live last week, after the uproar about the conspicuously monochromatic nature of this year's Oscar nominees. NBC's late night comedy staple produced a sketch about the kerfuffle, which is actually not…

When Barack Obama took office, America’s national debt was $10.6 trillion. It's now $19.0 trillion—an increase of $8.4 trillion in just seven years, or $1.2 trillion per year.

I had thought that Matt Lewis's new book about the conservative Republican future, Too Dumb To Fail, had a title that was accurate but a bit ahead of its time. Then, on the eve of the book's publication, Sarah Palin endorsed the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, with a rambling "speech" that…

Sen. Ted Cruz is "a nasty person," Donald Trump said Monday, projecting himself as the comparatively reasonable alternative in the Republican presidential primary.

A Houston grand jury investigating undercover videos of Planned Parenthood issued a surprise decision Monday, indicting the founder of the organization behind the footage and another anti-abortion activist.

One of Secretary Clinton's last questions at tonight's CNN townhall debate came from a young Iowan by the name of Brett Rosenberg.

During CNN's Democratic Town Hall Monday night, only one of the three candidates was asked about his age: Bernie Sanders. In response, Sanders touted his good health. Chris Cuomo did not ask Hillary Clinton, who is about 6 years younger than 74 year-old Sanders, about her age.

During CNN's Democratic town hall, a first-time caucusgoer leaning towards Bernie Sanders asked Hillary Clinton about the lack of enthusiasm surrounding her campaign -- and said that people his age think she's dishonest.

Hillary Clinton is committing herself to trying to win Iowa. The Midwest state, which Clinton lost in 2008 to Barack Obama and John Edwards, holds its caucus exactly a week from today.

Chris Christie's campaign released a new campaign video of him discussing crying in office.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the Iowa caucuses, just one week away.

Some New Hampshire primary voters may be trying to decide between John Kasich and...Bernie Sanders?

The leading Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, was hit with a "coughing attack" midway through remarks today in Iowa:

Monday morning, Governor Chris Christie was asked about why he's back in New Hampshire so soon after the recent storm that caused flooding and other damage in New Jersey.

Donald Trump released a video message Monday morning, naming most every political apparatus imaginable as one of his adversaries.

On Sunday night, The X-Files returned to television.

Jeb Bush has the support of just one percent of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa, according to a new poll from CBS News. The poll, released Sunday, found Bush with the same level of support as Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, and John Kasich. That puts Bush behind Chris Christie (2 percent), Rand…

Donald Trump is not a conservative. He is only recently a Republican. He is losing in the polls to Hillary Clinton. He is mean and abrasive, and he manifestly lacks the temperament to be president of the United States.

Neither Trump Nor Hillary!

I'm passing on this amusing and thought-provoking email from a political junkie friend.

A new Ted Cruz ad attacks Donald Trump for the time Trump "colluded with Atlantic City insiders to bulldoze the home of an elderly widow for a limousine parking lot at his casino."

A surrogate for Hillary Clinton, former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, called Bernie Sanders an "atheist" this morning on ABC's This Week. Granholm soon corrected herself and called Sanders a "socialist."

On Saturday evening, the Des Moines Register endorsed Marco Rubio for the Republican presidential nomination:

When National Review unveiled its “Against Trump" issue on January 21, Jeb Bush celebrated the arrival of reinforcements. "Welcome to the fight, all. Trump is not a conservative," he tweeted.

Martial law has been decalred in New York City. This comes in response to this year's biggest snow storm.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the new issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, and his contribution to National Review's Trump symposium.

The boss joins National Review's Jay Nordlinger on his Ricochet podcast to discuss the "Neither Trump Nor Hillary" movement.

In December, Donald Trump ducked a question about whether he would seek to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade in order to allow legislators to pass laws protecting the lives of human beings who haven't been born yet. "You're gonna need a lot of Supreme Court justices, but…

Let me be clear — I am pro-life. I support that position with exceptions allowed for rape, incest or the life of the mother being at risk. I did not always hold this position, but I had a significant personal experience that brought the precious gift of life into perspective for me. My story is…

Almost all Republican members of the U.S. House and Senate say they're pro-life and vote that way. But few are willing to speak out and lead on the issue. It's controversial. It may alienate members of the donor class and infuriate some Democrats. Iowa senator Joni Ernst doesn't seem to care about…

The snow is snowing. The wind is blowing. But I can weather the storm. What do I care how much it may storm? I've got my drink to keep me warm. That's right—Snowpocalypse 2016 is officially upon us (at least for those of us in the mid-Atlantic), so what better time to offer these drink recipes that…

Many Americans are watching the gains racked up in their pension accounts in the last five years wiped out in the past few weeks. And fretting that no one seems to know what to do about it. The president says that economy is just fine. The Congress says the president is detached from reality in…

The chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is blasting the Obama administration for its visa waiver program that accommodates Iran. In a statement released by his office today, Chairman Ed Royce reacts "to the Obama administration’s implementation of the recently passed Visa Waiver…

Julián Castro is ostensibly still the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a post he's held since 2014 after he resigned as mayor of San Antonio. But according to Politico, the Texas Democrat seems to have spent a lot of his 18 months in Washington getting ready for the next job:…

The sad news came today of the death of Forrest MacDonald, one of the greatest intellectual historians America has produced. McDonald’s specialty was the Founding Fathers and he was unapologetically conservative. He once said the two facts were closely related, because a proper understanding of the…

"I'm not serving in office because I desperately needed 99 new friends in the U.S. Senate," Sen. Ted Cruz has said. Turns out he could've used at least a few.

Ahead of her speech at the March for Life on Friday, Iowa GOP senator Joni Ernst said that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and other presidential candidates should tell voters where they stand on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that declared a right to abortion-on-demand.

S.E. Cupp says the Sarah Palin she once knew is gone. She says this because of Palin's endorsement of Donald Trump, whose stances on issues close to Palin's heart have been inconsistent.

The Real Clear Politics average of recent polls finds that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are each ahead of Hillary Clinton in head-to-head polling, while Clinton is ahead of Donald Trump. Clinton leads Trump by a tally of 45 to 43 percent. Meanwhile, Rubio leads Clinton by 46 to 44 percent, and Cruz…

And then there were three. The North Korean government announced on Friday that it has detained another American tourist, bringing the tally of western hostages festering in Pyongyang to two Americans and one Canadian.

A former top Justice Department official now says that a "Criminal Charge Is Justified" in conjunction with classified information and her private email server. Michael Mukasey, former attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, writes in the Wall Street Journal: "Clinton's Emails: A…

The latest ad from the leading presidential candidate, Donald Trump, accuses the next best candidate, Ted Cruz, of being "pro-amnesty." Cruz is also labeled "Pro Immigration" in the ad.

On Thursday, in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, a former defense secretary under Presidents Bush and Obama, Robert Gates, said "the odds are pretty high" Hillary Clinton's server was compromised by a foreign government.

When political strategist Karl Rove spoke in Washington last week, he was reluctant to talk about the 2016 presidential race. His most extensive comment to a packed crowd at the American Enterprise Institute was to say that the Republican nominee should emphasize “economic security" for everyone,…

Two weeks ago, al Qaeda-linked jihadists attacked the Splendid Hotel in Burkina Faso and murdered 28 people, including an American missionary. It was the work of al Qaeda’s Algerian franchise, one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups, albeit one less known to Westerners. Al Qaeda in the Islamic…

Sometimes in January, often in February—always somewhere in the course of the winter—I feel it settling down on me and the season: that icy fog that dulls the senses, the cold that gnaws the bone, the sadness that deadens the will.

North Conway, N.H.

The name, you think when you first lay eyes upon the place, says it all. The wide, shimmering flat that is streaked with white that you know without being told is salt. The hard, angular mountains with no sign of vegetation growing on their slopes. The washed out colors—reds, browns, copper. The…

The Scrapbook has been secretly rooting for Bernie Sanders for a while now, because, well, he’s not Hillary Clinton. However, we are not without serious reservations about his candidacy. Many of his policy proposals reveal the rich fantasy life of the left, and not even the New York Times can…

Since the arrival of Christmas break and J-Term, the screaming campus hordes of November have largely gone the way of summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. The dropping temperatures transform outdoor protests into events suitable only for those of the most iron resolve. Still, there are…

Mike Pitts, a Republican state legislator in South Carolina, last week proposed a law that would require journalists in the state to sign on to a “responsible journalism registry." For anyone who understands the issues at the heart of recent gun control debates, it was obvious the law was more of a…

My friend the movie producer is a major fan of Mad Max: Fury Road. He says it’s the best film he thinks he's seen in five years. This is interesting, because it's not the kind of movie he makes; he produces "indies," meaning films with relatively modest budgets that center on character rather than…

Celebrity gossip is such a fixture of modern life that it’s easy to assume we invented it. But long before TMZ, the E! channel, and People began chronicling the lives of the glitterati, the Englishman John Aubrey (1626-1697) was jotting juicy tidbits about his contemporaries and near-contemporaries…

I rarely read new books about the Holocaust. Spiking European antisemitism, campus harassment of Jewish students in America, and the stabbings in Israel more than fill my quota for bad Jewish news.

This history of Harvard Law School in its first century (1817-1917) appears at a time when several American colleges and universities are revisiting, and in some instances seeking to revise, their pasts. The revisionist impulses originate in a perceived dissonance between values currently endorsed…

With very little warning, the Republican primaries began in earnest at the Charleston debate on January 14, closing out a year of fundraising and polite jockeying. What had once been a field of 17 declared candidates—with 8 or 10 of them being serious, substantive contenders—was, by the end of the…

It's that magical time in the presidential cycle again, when all the preelection year’s wild conjecture, clueless handicapping, and abject foolishness has ended, so that the election year's wild conjecture, clueless handicapping, and abject foolishness can begin. It's that time when panicked,…

American presidents are always emotionally and politically drawn to the plight of American hostages overseas. In his sympathy and paternalism, Barack Obama seems just like Ronald Reagan, who traded Hawk missiles to Iran for the release of Americans held by the Lebanese Hezbollah, the clerical…

Do we really need new vehicles for retirement savings, especially ones that give new powers to state governments to coerce workers to save? Several states—most notably Illinois—are creating their own state-sponsored savings plans. The idea is to make retirement saving "easy" for workers (perhaps…

Depicted by masters of American literature from Herman Melville to Mark Twain to Donald Westlake, cropping up in real life in each epoch of our great hustling and bustling and grasping commercial republic, the confidence man is a primordial American type. Many accounts treat him with some…

The conventional wisdom about Republican presidential nominations goes something like this: Either (1) a single candidate wins Iowa and New Hampshire, then sweeps the rest of the field; or (2) the winner in Iowa fails to take New Hampshire, and we wait a few weeks for South Carolina and Nevada to…

Do Republicans deserve to lose? Consider the state of play as we write this in late January, just days from the first GOP nominating contests.

Readers are well aware of The Scrapbook’s attitude toward PolitiFact, the much-admired "fact-checking" watchdog of American politics run by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in Florida. Under the guise of a journalistic enterprise, PolitiFact is, in truth, a partisan rapid-reaction squad,…

Before Donald Trump takes the stage in Northern Iowa University’s gymnasium, a woman he once fired tries to convince the crowd of 1,000 that Trump's victory is inevitable. "Hop aboard the Trump train. 'Cause let me tell you what, folks. We are going places. And we are going places fast. And we are…

Mix together John McPhee, Paul Theroux, and V. S. Naipaul—geology, travel, and history and politics—and distill the mixture, and one has a good idea of Simon Winchester's particular gift. Like these three writers, Winchester wields intelligence, observation, and masterful narrative skills to…

Hillary Clinton told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that the 74-year-old socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, is more entrenched in the Democratic establishment than she is. The two are vying to be this year's Democratic nominee for president of the United States.

The Bush campaign is out with a new ad attacking senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz for their records on ISIS and Syria.

On Wednesday night, hundreds of protestors broke through police lines and flooded into the Moldovan parliamentary building after the announcement that Pavel Filip, deputy chairman of the ruling Democratic Party and the minister of technology and communication, had been voted prime minister.

A headline on CNN goes like this: "Ta-Nehisi Coates' slam on Bernie Sanders." Readers should be excused for thinking the link leads to a story fitting that description. It doesn't.

London

Late last year, a group of Oberlin students delivered a list of demands to the Ohio college's president and trustees. The demands were ostensibly meant to redress wrongs suffered by the college's black students. (Oberlin's president has just offered a thoughtful response, which can be read here.)…

During a Hillary Clinton rally at Simpson College's Kent Campus Center in Indianola, Iowa, on Thursday, one can see a man slowly falling asleep, right behind her.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on whether a Trump nomination is inevitable.

By 12:30 p.m. on M Street in downtown Washington, D.C., Bub and Pop's sandwich shop is buzzing. The line to order stretches out the door of the little shop, which is housed in a brightly colored English basement in a converted rowhouse.

Six days after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, and just hours before President Obama would address the Congress for his final State of the Union speech, the House of Representatives passed the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act (NKSEA) by a vote of 418-2. (Full disclosure: I worked with…

Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Hillary Clinton is tougher on Iran than her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders. And the former secretary of state believes that's an important distinction between the Democrats.

An ambitious liberal Democrat — some even call him a socialist — is knocking Hillary Clinton for her past support of the Iraq War. His name is not Barack Obama, and the year is not 2008. It's Bernie Sanders, it's 2016, and the presidential campaign's only contender to have voted for the use of…

A 15.7 mile road trip from Andrews Air Force Base to the White House took the president more than an hour last night as the Washington, D.C. area was hit with its first snow fall of the season. The total cumulation of snow last night was 1 inch.

Bernie Sanders is subtly bringing up Dick Cheney and George W. Bush in his latest ad. The ad is an anti-Iraq spot, highlighting his opposition to the war from the get go.

I would've guessed with all the bad press surrounding Chipotle Mexican Grill, there would be no lines during the lunch hour. But that guess would be wrong. On a recent visit to my nearest Chipotle (on M Street), the line was practically out the door at 12:30 p.m. As it turns out, there are fans of…

Senator Jeff Session of Alabama blasted the findings of a new DHS report on visa overstays.

Amid the closure of 150 or so Walmarts across the country, the booming Washington, D.C., region did not escape without casualties. Two planned stores in poorer parts of town, east of the Anacostia river, will not be built.

After delivering an endorsement speech on behalf of Donald Trump on Tuesday evening, Sarah Palin failed to appear at a joint rally scheduled for the following morning. Perhaps Trump doesn’t like sharing the stage with somebody who has (almost) as much start power as him. Or, maybe more likely, the…

On Tuesday, a state legislator in South Carolina proposed a law that would force journalists to register with the state as part of a "responsible journalism registry." Of course, Rep. Mike Pitts wasn't seriously proposing this. He was simply engaged in a bit of formal trolling to point out the…

Donald Trump framed his unqualified support of ethanol Tuesday as an act of political independence — this, before a gathering of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit, less than two weeks away from the state's caucus.

Chelsea Clinton will be in London February 23 for a fundraiser for her mother, Hillary Clinton. The former (and perhaps future) first daughter will be joined by fashion icon Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue.

This is MSNBC: a primetime interview of a puppet dog smoking a cigar. The exclusive was Lawrence O'Donnell's, who interviewed Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog. The puppet is a creation of comedians Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel.

The Hillary Clinton campaign is sending former President Bill Clinton to Las Vegas. But he's not going there to have a good time. The former president is going to Vegas "to outline why Hillary Clinton is the best choice in 2016," the campaign announced.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack, live from Iowa, on whether Sarah Palin will push Donald Trump to a caucus win in Iowa.

Bernie Sanders is rising because of help from Republicans. At least, that's the arugment the Hillary Clinton campaign is making today.

In their attempt to shame the rich and powerful into mouthing some platitudes on behalf of the poor at the upcoming Davos meeting, Oxfam announced last week that the 60 richest men in the world have as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the world's denizens.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with frequent contributor Adam J. White from the Hoover Institution on the high court and the future of the Obama administration's executive actions on immigration law.

The National Football League has hired a former White House press secretary in the Bill Clinton administration. Joe Lockhart was named today the league's new executive vice president of communications.

Early last week, Planned Parenthood endorsed Hillary Clinton. It's the first time the organization has backed a candidate in the primary.

Almost from its very beginnings, the Obama Administration has seemed at a loss about how to respond to North Korea. In his inauguration speech, President Obama told "those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent" that he would "extend a hand if you are willing…

In the New York Times, Margot Sanger-Katz kicks the tires on Bernie Sanders’s just released health care plan and the details, or rather the lackthereof, are not encouraging:

An LGBT group, the Human Rights Campaign, endorsed Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. Following the endorsement, Clinton tweeted this:

Is Donald Trump Pat Buchanan redux? Sure, Buchanan is outwardly pious, while Trump is . . . well, Trump. (Nobody ever doubted Buchanan's anti-abortion bona fides, for example.) And while Buchanan, whatever you make of his politics, is undeniably a serious intellectual, Trump . . . well, at the very…

Nate Silver sheds light on how Donald Trump might perform in the general election. Because Trump is such a unique candidate, people have been trying to determine how he might perform in the general, if he wins the Republican nomination. Some think his harsh persona will limit his appeal to…

Earlier this morning, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates went on MSNBC's Morning Joe to promote his new book on leadership.

The enemies of Israel neither slumber nor sleep. They include not only the technically competent barbarians of Iran, exuberantly aggressive with the prospect of nuclear weapons and the $150 billion "signing bonus" paid them for signing a sham agreement with America; not only Iran's proxies to the…

Sunday night's Democratic debate had 8.72 million viewers, according to Nielsen. But 11.34 million people watched CBS's Madam Secretary, which aired at the same time. Over 20 million watched CBS's 60 Minutes. The NFL playoff game, which aired at 7pm E.S.T, had over 40 million viewers.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on Ted Cruz's "New York Values" jab at Donald Trump, and how it might be working to his benefit.

Hillary Clinton may have a Millennial problem on her hands. A survey from USA Today and Rock the Vote released last week found her main Democratic opponent, Vermont independent senator Bernie Sanders, is winning Democratic primary voters between the ages of 18 and 34 by more than 10 points, 46…

The latest Conversations With Bill Kristol features former Harvard president Larry Summers:

One thought on last night's Democratic debate. It seems clear Hillary Clinton has decided to wrap herself in the mantle of President Obama, and in effect run for Obama's third term.

The battle between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz has finally begun. A few thoughts on this long-anticipated fight:

To Jerusalem and Back

At 10:53 p.m. EST, NBC ended the Democratic presidential debate. The debate was scheduled to go until 11 p.m.

Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, said, "I know how much money influences political decision-making."

During the Democratic debate Sunday night, Bernie Sanders was asked about his Wall Street-related attacks on Hillary Clinton.

During Sunday's Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders was asked how he could be the nominee if he doesn't have minority support.

Right before Sunday night's Democratic debate, MSNBC aired each candidate entering.

According to MSNBC and Google, voters have lots of questions about Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

The NFL playoffs continued Sunday, followed by the Democratic debate at 9 p.m. EST. This comes in the middle of a three day weekend, as tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday.

Following reports that Hillary Clinton ally and founder of Correct the Record (which coordinates with the Clinton campaign) David Brock was planning to attack Bernie Sanders on his health, Clinton's campaign chair told Brock to "chill out."

John Kerry has announced that the U.S. has made a $1.7 billion payment directly to Iran. Here's the secretary of state's statement:

Presidential candidate Donald Trump told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he'll consider filing a lawsuit against Ted Cruz regarding his U.S. citizenship. Trump made the comments after Stephanopoulos asked whether he'd sue.

Hillary Clinton claimed on CNN this morning that she has not yet been interviewed by the FBI in regards to its investigation into her email server. Clinton made the claim in response to a question from CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper.

When Ben Carson was rising in the polls, Donald Trump was quick to attack the former neurosurgeon for being "pro-abortion not so long ago."

Hillary Clinton is talking tough on Iran. In a statement released to the press, the leading Democratic candidate took a tougher stance than President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry.

Iranian press is reporting that Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian has been released in a "prisoner swap" deal with the United States.

Hillary Clinton will appear on every Sunday show this week. Except for Fox News Sunday, hosted by Chris Wallace.

The final State of the Union address of any president evokes thoughts that vary with his success while in office. For the successful, such as Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, it is a moment on which to look back with some satisfaction. For President Obama, with only 27 percent of…

North Charleston, S.C.

Bill Kristol argues that because Republican presidential candidates aren’t focusing on such issues as Obamacare and Supreme Court appointments—crucial issues on which Donald Trump is quite vulnerable—GOP voters are becoming "increasingly comfortable" with the notion of casting a ballot for Trump. A…

New Jersey governor Chris Christie has had a remarkable comeback in the GOP presidential race. Back in November, he was relegated to the undercard debate, but he managed to bounce back in the polls in the wake of the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. He is now right in the mix with Rubio, Bush,…

Much has been made of Sean Penn’s recently released secret interview with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, mastermind of two daring prison escapes, and the author of immeasurable suffering the world over. That Penn would shake hands with El Chapo isn't too surprising,…

A confession: I didn't wake up at 4:00 am here in Israel in order to watch last night's Republican presidential debate. A further confession: I can't say I regret that decision. But it does mean my judgment of the debate, which follows, is based on reading the transcript rather than watching and…

At last night's GOP debate in South Carolina, Texas senator Ted Cruz painted himself into a corner.

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina slammed Hillary Clinton -- and her marriage -- this morning on MSNBC.

Ted Cruz's national co-chair, Rep. Steve King of Iowa, said this morning on CNN that Donald Trump got the better of exchange last night on New York values.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has released his second television ad. The ad, titled "Our Country," is backed by a $1.4 million ad buy in Iowa and almost $1 million dollars in New Hampshire.

A panel on “Grappling with Campus Rape" was part of the "Hot Topic" program at the American Association of Law Schools annual meeting, held January 6-10 in midtown Manhattan. Indeed, that issue has been the focus of particularly intense polemics in academia. A number of law professors, even some…

The Little Sisters of the Poor are headed to the Supreme Court this year, seeking escape from the contraception mandates of Obamacare — under which they fall, the government claims, as insurance providers for the employees in their nursing homes. The Justice Department is fighting the Little…

The Revenant is beautifully photographed. Really. It’s beautiful. I mean, you've never seen such beauty. We're talking nature here, people. Rivers. Mountains. Snow. Even an avalanche. Some fog, both early morning and late afternoon. Also, it's supposed to be set in 1823, so the idea is we're seeing…

The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer is out with a new book, Dark Money, purporting to unmask those dastardly Koch brothers and their infamous habit of spending money to support libertarian and conservative causes. Her 2010 New Yorker article "Covert Operations" succeeded in vilifying the Kochs among…

G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried." The same can be said of a more down-to-earth but still-radical idea: The late Jack Kemp's antipoverty proposal for urban enterprise zones was found…

If you weren’t lucky enough to see it for yourself, it's hard to describe how charming—how reassuring and inspiriting—the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica was in the middle 1970s. The neighborhoods spread from the bluffs above the beach through a low-rise business district and then along avenues…

Marines are made at a recruit depot located amid the swamps of Parris Island, tethered to the rest of the Carolina coast by a single causeway, and at another such depot in California, jammed onto a scrubby patch of ground between the San Diego International Airport and Interstate 5.

For all but a few, fame is ephemeral—and especially ephemeral for journalists, who are often astute observers of current events but seldom leave a lasting imprint. Drew Pearson, a powerful and much-feared muckraking columnist and broadcaster from the 1930s through the '60s, is mostly forgotten now;…

The main goal for any tax reform that merits being called a reform is to boost economic growth. The way to do that, most economists whose last name isn’t Krugman aver, is to reduce marginal tax rates on businesses both large and small and make up the lost revenue by eliminating various tax…

We should all be active participants in a good and decent public life, President Barack Obama lectured in his final State of the Union address. But then he issued this important caveat: “It is not easy." And how! But we should be grateful for small mercies: At least he didn't say "and it won't be…

I've never been one for elaborate New Year’s rituals. I don't thump the walls with bread to rid the house of evil spirits, as some do in Ireland. Nor swing caged fireballs around my head to torch last year's misfortune, as they do in Stonehaven, Scotland. I don't make hollow resolutions, since I…

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

Jerusalem

To the medieval Europeans who built magnificent cathedrals and oversaw the greatest flowering of Western culture since Rome, few stories had more resonance than that of Troilus and Criseyde. All three European languages that have given us significant medieval literatures—French, Italian, and…

It's been half a decade since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which had been drilling the BP-owned Macondo Prospect, suffered a catastrophic blowout. Over 87 days between April and July 2010, 4.9 million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Social media mavens would have us believe that print media is dead, killed off by the innovative disruption of onscreen newspapers, magazines, and ebooks. But it turns out that pockets of print and print lovers still exist. Part of print’s survival is psychological. In the case of books, body…

Obamacare is closer than ever to being repealed. Congressional Republicans recently took one of their most assertive actions against it to date, while the centerpiece of the Obama presidency is playing out even worse than most of its opponents predicted. What’s missing is a presidential contender…

Those happy days for Democrats and the media—when House Republicans were angry with each other and divided—are over. The archconservatives of the House Freedom Caucus are mostly on board with Speaker Paul Ryan. So is Heritage Action, the serious-minded group that wants the most conservative ideas…

A loyal reader brought to our attention the death last week at age 103 of a western Michigan philanthropist, Ralph Hauenstein. Our scribe writes that Hauenstein was “a real American hero" and encouraged us to read about him, since "we have so few chances left to say thank you to this generation."

Like many prizes offered by The Scrapbook, the Antonio de Spinola Award is not bestowed on a regular basis. This is not because The Scrapbook is instinctively ungenerous or reluctant to cheapen a distinct honor. It is because of the nature of the award itself.

The Constitution provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." But, as Gary Scott Smith of Grove City College writes in his new book, Religion in the Oval Office, "Throughout American history many citizens have…

Early last Wednesday, Iran released the ten American sailors it had detained to coincide with President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. The administration understood clearly that the Iranians were both trying to ruin Obama's victory lap and sending a message—on the eve of…

The Washington Post editorialized in November that it was time to regulate how much sugar Americans consume. Sugar causes obesity, which leads to heart disease and diabetes. Government has to pick up much of the tab for treatment, which justifies the feds putting themselves between consumers and…

Rahm Emanuel still is Chicago’s mayor. So far, anyway. Not that any serious students of the Chicago Way expected Emanuel to resign, even in the face of accusations that he covered up the brutal shooting of a black youth by a white cop. He might not have survived last year's mayoral election if…

Marco Rubio went into Thursday night's debate in South Carolina with a nagging problem. The Florida senator has been sitting around third place in the polls, including in Iowa and New Hampshire, for weeks, while Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have battled it out at the top. Without some kind of…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on last night's Fox Business debate, where Ted Cruz finally confronted Donald Trump.

The Charleston debate may have been more consequential than it looked at first glance. For starters, neither Jeb Bush nor John Kasich nor Ben Carson registered. (Except for Bush’s bizarre decision to make his most impassioned argument of the campaign in service of the rights of Muslim citizens from…

If tonight’s debate presented an opportunity for Jeb Bush, John Kasich, or Dr. Ben Carson to get back into the race, it hasn't worked out that way. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie all have presence tonight – an intensity and urgency that suggests they know they're in the…

At tonight's Republican debate, Ted Cruz answered the question of whether he is eligible to be president, as he he was born to an American mother in Canada:

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, on the recent capture of two U.S. Navy vessels by Iran.

Earlier this week on the campaign trail, Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, attacked Bernie Sanders. It turns out, a Clinton spokesman told the press, the Chelsea Clinton attack was not a planned event.

As tensions in Asia, particularly in and around the South and East China Seas, have steadily risen in the past eight years, Taiwan has emerged as an island of unexpected tranquility. The thaw in cross-Strait relations brought about by the era of the Nationalist (KMT) presidency of Taiwan’s Ma…

On Wednesday, Amanda de Cadenet interviewed Hillary Clinton on a variety of topics, including her life in politics and hanging out with her girls.

Monday night’s terrific championship game between Clemson and Alabama—the same matchup the old Bowl Championship Series system would have produced—capped yet another splendid college football season. Unlike in so many other sports, the format produced a champion that actually was the best team on…

In his final State of the Union, President Obama declared his belief that "a thriving private sector is the lifeblood of our economy," which he paired with the assertion that "there are outdated regulations that need to be changed and there’s red tape that needs to be cut."

Texas senator Ted Cruz now says Edward Snowden is a "traitor" who should be "tried for treason." Cruz told the New York Times in a statement his current view on the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked the details of a classified surveillance program.

On Wednesday, I noted that the New York Times had heaped a lot of favorable coverage upon New Yorker writer Jane Mayer’s new book on the Koch brothers, despite the fact that the coverage was unfair to the Kochs and failed to disclose that Mayer is the wife of the Times's Washington editor. Well,…

Governor Chris Christie is out with a new 30-second TV ad in which he claims his "top priority" as president would be to "protect the lives of the people of the United States of America." The ad, which is running in TV markets across Iowa, features the New Jersey Republican speaking to the camera…

Cedar Falls, Iowa

The latest poll of likely Democratic caucusgoers in Iowa from the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg finds Hillary Clinton just two points ahead of Bernie Sanders. The survey of 503 likely participants in the February 1 caucuses found 42 percent support Clinton, the former secretary of state, while…

RT announced today that former MSNBC host Ed Schultz will be joining the primetime lineup. The announcement comes in the form of this video:

The Republicans are back onstage in a debate that presents some interesting strategic opportunities.

Hillary Clinton's campaign manager is trying to rally the troops. In an email this evening to supporters, Robbie Mook warns that "the Sanders campaign is outspending us on TV."

I'm not a Rams fan. This is because I do not respect football teams that play indoors, a practice (rightly) mocked by my people: Cleveland Browns fans. Not that we have much to brag about other than our terrible weather.

My local weekly newspaper, The DC Current, (like most such things amply funded by real estate ads) reports that the latest housing development in my upmarket D.C. neighborhood has run into an obstacle.

In 2011, Jane Mayer of the New Yorker published, "Covert Operations," an article that purported to "expose" the well-known fact the Koch Brothers were financially supporting a lot of libertarian and conservative causes. The trouble is, the article had some pretty serious factual problems and…

Walter Russell Mead has a typically incisive post about the economic problems rippling outward from China. He points out there are actually two issues here—China and the China Bubble:

The Bernie Sanders campaign has released a statement attacking Hillary Clinton on health care:

Canada-born Texas senator Ted Cruz may be annoyed that Donald Trump has begun playing Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." at his rallies. But one person evidently isn't: Mr. Springsteen himself.

Wednesday morning, Hillary Clinton was asked if she bought a powerball ticket. She replied, "I did!"

I'm in Israel, where I've been leading a full-day seminar on American conservatism for twenty or so very bright young Israelis. So I've been spared (thankfully) the annoyance of watching Obama's State of the Union, and also haven't been able to follow the Iranian seizing of our sailors as closely…

Bernie Sanders believes he's the voice of the Democratic party.

Secretary of State John Kerry expressed his "gratitude" this morning to Iran. Iran detained 10 U.S. sailors and released the Americans this morning.

One of the men who is credited with helping facilitate the pardon of Marc Rich, Eric Holder, has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Holder was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and, more recently, attorney general in the Obama administration.

The latest poll of likely Republican Iowa caucusgoers from the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg finds Senator Ted Cruz in a smaller lead with 25 percent support to Donald Trump's 22 percent.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes, breaking down President Obama's final State of the Union Address.

David Axelrod, former senior advisor to President Obama, criticized Hillary Clinton's campaign for using Chelsea Clinton to attack her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, on healthcare.

The Republican National Committee is responding to Barack Obama's final State of the Union Address by releasing this video, focusing on national security failures:

Here's the full text of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's Republican Response to President Obama's final State of the Union Address:

In tonight's State of the Union Address, President Obama touts the Iran nuclear deal.

Here's the full text of President Obama's final State of the Union Address:

CNN's Dana Bash asked Marco Rubio whether Ted Cruz is eligible to be president of the United States. Cruz, of course, was born in Canada to an American mother.

Cedar Falls, Iowa

Chelsea Clinton hit a few roadblocks on Tuesday, while stumping for her mother Hillary.

Chris Christie says he was misquoted more than 20 years ago as saying he had donated to Planned Parenthood. In an interview with CBS's John Dickerson that aired Sunday, Christie denied a claim made by presidential rival Marco Rubio that the New Jersey Republican had once donated to Planned…

There are new polls out of the Democratic early states and they aren’t especially good for Hillary Clinton. ARG has Bernie Sanders at +3 in Iowa. That's probably an outlier, but the trend is pretty clear: Clinton has led by double digits in Iowa since October. Now Sanders is suddenly within single…

A 2009 campaign ad for Chris Christie's gubernatorial campaign included praise for President Obama.

The Hillary Clinton campaign has benefited greatly from the perception that her nomination is inevitable. The DNC has done its best to favor her, with a debate schedule that leaves few opportunities for insurgent candidacies to be heard, to say nothing of how they have even unfairly punished the…

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, has a five-point lead over his rival Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic caucusgoers in Iowa. That's according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University, which found Sanders with 49 percent support to Clinton's 44 percent.

A new poll of likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire finds Vermont senator Bernie Sanders with a 14-point lead over Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state. Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, has 53 percent support according to the new poll from Monmouth University. Clinton,…

On occasion my radio colleagues accuse me of being a “hard worker." I have a standard reply: "I haven't worked a day of my life since the last time I cropped tobacco for my Uncle Bobby."

Among the points the internet has in its favor is the way it organically remembers random artifacts of our pop culture. A few years ago, someone uploaded to YouTube a clip from Bing Crosby's 1977 Christmas special for CBS. In the clip, Crosby sings a version of "The Little Drummer Boy" with, of all…

At a candidate forum last night hosted by Jorge Ramos, Hillary Clinton was asked about her own "white privilege."

Vice President Joe Biden said that no one questions Bernie Sanders's "authenticity" on income inequality. But Clinton, the vice president said, has only now started talking about the issue.

Journalist Jorge Ramos, an anchor on Fusion, asked Hillary Clinton about her current email accounts. "How many email accounts do you have?"

Jeff Weaver, the campaign manager for Bernie Sanders's presidential run, made the case this evening that Sanders is the most electable Democrat in the race.

Earlier today in Saraosta, Florida, Marco Rubio gave a speech to supporters outlining his views on economic policy, and contrasting himself with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin is shuttering his state's Obamacare insurance marketplace, the freshly elected Republican announced Monday.

It seems time is running out for the main protagonist in a quarter-century-long saga involving radical Islam and hyper-humanitarianism, extending from Iraqi Kurdistan to Norway. A U.S.-designated terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam (Volunteers of Islam) is prominent in the Syria and Iraq fighting,…

At an event to accept the endorsement of Planned Parenthood in New Hampshire on Sunday, Hillary Clinton called for unlimited taxpayer-funding of elective abortions for Medicaid recipients.

When political candidates play Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." at their campaign rallies, you can usually assume they've never listened to the lyrics. But Donald Trump's apparent decision to add the 1984 tune his warm-up music bespeaks a certain political savvy.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on his recent review of the soon-to-be-released Benghazi movie 13 Hours.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will host "poverty fighters" for President Obama's State of the Union Address. The speaker will also host Little Sisters of the Poor and a "Hero in the Balcony" at the Capitol on Tuesday.

The Financial Times reports that Jeb Bush is starting to come out of his shell and appear more comfortable on the campaign trail. Part of that is his selfie strategy.

The Chinese are wrong to overlook North Korea’s broken promise not to test nuclear weapons, in the interests of "trying to warm long-strained relations." So they are told by John Kerry. But I, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, am right to overlook Iran's repeated provocations…

A new poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal Sunday gave a shocking assessment of the state of the Democratic caucuses in Iowa. Widely considered the frontrunner and a near-lock for the Democratic nomination, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton appears to be leading her main…

If a normal person is asked whether he or she has read a certain book, the response can be a simple "yes" or "no." For a journalist (i.e., not a normal person), there's a wonderfully cynical rejoinder: "Read it? I haven't even reviewed it!" Also: "Well, I've read in it." I was reminded of this upon…

The first lady of the United States will be sitting with a Syrian refugee at this week's State of the Union Address. The refugee's name is Refaai Hamo.

The press secretary for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign called the former secretary of a state and the president of the nation's largest abortion provider "badasses."

Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor running for president as a Republican, told CBS's John Dickerson Sunday that he "never donated to Planned Parenthood." Christie was responding to a charge by one of his GOP rivals, Florida senator Marco Rubio, who said late last week that the two-term…

On Friday, actress/director/political activist Lena Dunham campaigned for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. During her speech, she accidentally called Clinton "Hillary," and apologized for it.

One of the emails included in the latest release of Hillary Clinton's State Department emails shows more tension between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hillary Clinton.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, was an enabler of her husband, Bill Clinton. And Trump said, Hillary is "not a victim."

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, commissioned a poll in December "testing how he would fare against Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton, according to two sources close to Mr. Bloomberg," the New York Times reports.

It should come as no surprise to even irregular readers of the New York Times that the paper's editorial view on guns is decidedly hostile.

Secretary of State John Kerry has done it again: even more foolish and offensive statements about the terrorist attacks in Paris a year ago.

Americans are convinced that things are not going well, and are not likely to improve soon. Gerald Seib, who follows these things for the Wall Street Journal, says Republican pollsters report the national mood as “Sour and dour. Nervous, on edge, a feeling of vulnerability and a lack of control."…

The Week Ahead

A year before Hillary Clinton apparently asked one of her top aides to remove the classification markings from a sensitive document and send it to her over an unsecured network, she pushed the same aide to remove a different document from the State Department's classified system and email it to her…

President Obama vetoed legislation today that would have repealed most of Obamacare. Congress passed the legislation using the same "reconciliation" process that Democrats used to get Obamacare across the finish line in 2010. That process allows senators to circumvent the filibuster and pass…

In 1972, at the age of 21, Phillip Garrido had his first arrest. The charge: sexual assault of a minor. Four years later, he kidnapped and raped Katherine Callaway, a crime for which he received a 50-year sentence in the federal Leavenworth Penitentiary. During his trial, Garrido testified to…

"Mission accomplished. We have him. I would like to inform Mexico that Joaquin Guzman Loera has been detained."

Is the New York Times obsessed with Marco Rubio's boots? That's the conclusion of the Florida senator's presidential campaign spokesman Alex Conant, who tweeted this image of the Gray Lady's top online political stories:

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on why Hillary is having a hard time playing the "war on women" card against Republicans, given her past and the Trump offensive.

Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mike Piazza were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. With his first time on the ballot, Griffey made history, named on 437 of 440 ballots (99.3 percent)—which has baseball left fans wondering how three journalists whose expertise is clearly European Handball got into the…

Florence King passed away this week and National Review’s Jack Fowler has written a lovely and touching obituary. What's especially touching is that Fowler does not whitewash King's eccentricities. He recounts what a difficult writer she was to deal with and even talks about how her unbelief seemed…

You no doubt remember Melissa Click, the University of Missouri journalism professor who was caught on camera demanding “some muscle" to remove a journalist who was covering protests in a public space.

On Wednesday, one of the GOP's happy warriors, Arizona governor Doug Ducey, announced a notable first appointment to the Supreme Court of Arizona. Ducey has appointed Clint Bolick, an independent, to the court.

Marco Rubio is running to be the football candidate, apparently. "This morning, the Marco Rubio for President campaign released a new television ad that will begin airing this weekend during the NFL Playoffs in select early state markets. In the new ad, Marco catches footballs and fields questions…

Hillary Clinton accused Republican candidates of hiring actors to appear at campaign rallies on Iowa. Clinton was quoted as making the conspiratorial claim in a recent CNN article:

After nearly a year of buildup, the Republican nomination process is finally set to begin. What do we know about how things will unfold?

Two years ago, the writer-director Quentin Tarantino announced his next picture would be a Western called The Hateful Eight. He sent his script to a few people, and it was leaked. Tarantino announced that he would not be making The Hateful Eight after all because he was so furious. Then he reversed…

Manchester, N.H. -- Crossing from Vermont into New Hampshire, you get a feel for what is driving the improbable Bernie Sanders campaign. The two states are separated by the Connecticut River valley, where the American industrial revolution could be said to have begun. The river supplied power for…

On the surface it seems clear why Donald Trump’s campaign is effective. His fame, bluster, wit, and intuitive sense for one-liners can be easily converted into media currency and are symbiotic with the mechanisms and values of the digital era. But none of this would avail were it not for a…

Sioux Center, Iowa -- Ted Cruz was running a few minutes late for his appearance at Dordt College, having to reply to the latest provocation from Donald Trump without angering the erratic businessman.

Ronald Syme — actually, Sir Ronald Syme — is not a household name in America, but perhaps it ought to be. Syme (1903-1989) was a New Zealand-born classicist, later an Oxford don, who is in many quarters regarded as the greatest historian of ancient Rome. He wrote a biography of Sallust and a…

I never save anything—or rather I save lots of stuff that I don't want while I throw away an equivalent amount of stuff that someday I will. Improbably I've saved a sheaf of letters I got from Florence King, the great journalist and memoirist, and when I heard the other evening that she'd died, at…

When word got out that Rep. Jim McDermott will be packing it in at the end of the year, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was quick to plump the blustery leftist who has represented Seattle since 1989. He “has been a tenacious champion of hard-working Americans," he "has shown the strength of…

Since Gore Vidal died at age 86 in 2012, the passage of time has invited the question of how—or if—he'll be remembered in popular culture.

Until very recently, The Scrapbook had not thought of any particular connection between Bill Cosby and Hillary Clinton. Of course, both are well known to the public—he as an entertainer, she as a politician—and they share a longtime interest in certain social issues and Democratic politics. You can…

Hillary Clinton says she comes from “the Clinton school of economics." It's her way of identifying with her husband, Bill Clinton, and suggesting that if elected president she would duplicate the economic success of his presidency.

Songwriters are the unknown soldiers of popular music. A few, like Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, have won lasting fame, but more often than not they labor in the shadows. Unless a songwriter has a parallel career as a performer, as did Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer, he does his job behind…

"Suddenly there was a hand on my bottom .  .  ." was the rather atypical headline that ran in Germany's ordinarily conservative daily newspaper Die Welt on January 4. It described a riot-like series of sexual assaults and robberies carried out on New Year's Eve in the center of Cologne on the…

Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) was not only Israel’s most beloved contemporary poet and the most widely translated, but also the most profoundly persuaded, with some justice, that his own convulsions and commotions were allied with the country's at large. One of the poems included in this sumptuous…

If there were any remaining doubts that a grudge is motivating Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’s policies dictating gender integration in the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps Times has dispelled them, revealing that Mabus sent the Marines a memo on New Year's Day ordering them to make their famously…

After the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants publicized al Qaeda’s beliefs, demands, and atrocities with a succession of crudely produced audio and videotapes sent to Al Jazeera and other networks. But during the Iraq war, the way that news and ideas were communicated started…

The attacks on Saudi Arabia’s two diplomatic missions in Iran—which came in response to Riyadh's execution of a Saudi Shiite cleric—are perhaps best understood as yet another skirmish in the Islamic Republic's long war against the regional order and the international order, both underwritten by the…

On January 5, President Obama announced various executive actions to tighten gun control measures. Most of the news led with the fact that Obama cried during the press conference. The Scrapbook takes no stand on whether the tears were sincere. We believe the president cares about victims of gun…

"This is a true story." Those words appear onscreen to open 13 Hours, the major motion picture about Benghazi, in theaters on January 15. And with them, director Michael Bay announced that he is taking sides in the long-running debate over the attacks there on September 11, 2012.

Writing in mid-June, a couple of days after Donald Trump announced his candidacy, we offered the judgment that he should not be our next president: “We're not Trump enthusiasts. We're not even Trump fellow travelers. We're closer to Trump deriders."

It is Elaine Parsons’s purpose in this timely book to measure the structure and impact of the "first" Ku Klux Klan, from its beginnings as an ex-Confederate officers' lark in middle Tennessee through its metastasis into a secretive and vicious force of murder, arson, and terror.

East of the Cascade Mountains, Oregon is largely bitterbrush and high desert. Virtually no one lives there, and compared with the populous and rainy Willamette Valley to the west, agriculture is difficult. Unless you’re from the area — I was raised there — it's hard to appreciate the sense of…

During his traditional year-end press conference in Moscow, Vladimir Putin delighted in toying with America’s political process by touting Donald Trump as the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Less clear was whether Putin was delivering kudos or lumps of coal to the…

Alexander Kaplen died December 16, 2015, at the age of 56. He was 31 when I last saw him on March 5, 1991, about 5:30 p.m. I know the time because I had rushed to the bank in a taxi with $8,000 in cash. The money was the Wigwag Magazine Company’s share of the auction proceeds of the magazine's hard…

Des Moines -- There's no other way to say it: Hillary Clinton is very boring. The Democratic presidential frontrunner's campaign stops are, too. The members of her traveling press corps look like they'd rather be anywhere else. So do some of the attendees, who shift in their seats starting around…

The boss joined CNN's Jake Tapper on The Lead and democratic strategist and former Clinton aide Donna Brazile to discuss Donald Trump's attacks on Hillary Clinton, her defense of Bill's lies about his extramarital activities, and how that squares with her recent statements about believing the…

Senator Marco Rubio criticized Chris Christie, one of his rivals for the Republican nomination, for doing "a number of things that are very similar to the Obama agenda."

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on President Obama's recent executive actions on gun control, and the forthcoming townhall to discuss the issue this evening on CNN.

It beggars belief to accept uncritically Pyongyang's claim that the recent North Korean nuclear test was a 2-stage H-bomb.

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton will campaign Tuesday for her mother, Hillary Clinton, in New Hampshire. The announcement was made by Hillary Clinton's campaign.

You may recall the sad coda to the Charlie Hebdo atrocity, which occurred a year ago this week. Several months after eleven Parisian journalists were savagely murdered for the "crime" of committing acts of free expression, PEN America, an organization devoted to promoting free speech, planned to…

Steven Avery is an innocent man, railroaded by the Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, Sheriff's Office and sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. This is the only conclusion at which one could reasonably arrive after watching Netflix's new true crime documentary series Making a Murderer, which…

A new Donald Trump web ad features Hillary Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Anthony Weiner, Bill Cosby, and Bill Clinton.

On Thursday, Donald Trump tweeted, ".@SenTedCruz Ted--free legal advice on how to pre-empt the Dems on citizen issue. Go to court now & seek Declaratory Judgment--you will win!"

Just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be any more breweries for AB InBev to acquire, the beer giant is now going after rival SABMiller. So the company that already owns Budweiser, Bud Light, Stella Artois, and Corona is now gunning for Miller, Coors, Peroni, and Blue Moon, to name a few.…

Before I begin, a word of caution: Public Policy Polling (PPP) is a Democratic firm that seems to have no problem using psephology stir up mischief among the political GOP.

While you were off enjoying Christmas and New Year's you may have missed an amazing story: Down in Ecuador a man met a woman. They fell in love. And now the woman is four months pregnant with his child. Amazing, right? Stop the presses!

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina wants her Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, to tell the mayor of Chicago to resign. Fiorina made the comments in an interview this evening with radio host Hugh Hewitt.

The White House is talking about Ted Cruz's birth place. President Obama's press secretary made the comments today in response to a reporter's question.

In an essay for Mosaic, Daniel Johnson asks, "Does Europe Have a Future? It's both a continent and an idea, with an alternately heroic and ignominious past and, until recently, an enviable present. Can the heart of the West survive the 21st century?"

During President Obama's remarks on his executive actions on gun control, the Washington Post's David Nakamura reported that Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett sat holding hands with Former Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords.

While the Republican presidential field is slowly narrowing, former governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson announced Wednesday that he will run for president as a Libertarian.

If you're one of those people who likes to collect examples of bias in the mainstream media, I have a prize piece for your scrapbook. And it's been hiding in plain sight for the last five months.

John Kerry is warning North Korea that the U.S. will take "appropriate action" in response to the rogue nation's "latest nuclear test."

So was it a hydrogen bomb or not? The answer, for the reasons elegantly laid out by Asia expert Sean King, may be largely irrelevant. But that doesn't mean North Korea's latest nuclear test isn't revelatory.

The BBC reports that organized gangs of young men assaulted, groped "between their legs", in at least one case raped, and robbed some 100 women in Cologne and Hamburg. Similar attacks were reported in Stuttgart. Cologne's police chief reported that the men were of Arab or North African appearance.…

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren had some praise this morning for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

In this week's edition of the boss's email newsletter -- Kristol Clear (sign up for free!) - Bill Kristol looks back on the sad fate of his New York Jets:

Tom Nichols has a thoughtful and pretty persuasive piece over at the Daily Beast arguing that Trumpmania is the direct consequence of the militant PC radicalism that has infested American society over the last decade or so.

North Korea is now claiming to have tested a hydrogen bomb. As the Washington Post reports:

On Tuesday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked Hillary Clinton, "What's the difference between a socialist and a Democrat?" He even preempted her dodge by asking, "Is that a question you want to answer, or would you rather not?"

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on President Obama's recently announced executive actions on gun control.

The former president of an influential conservative organization is endorsing Marco Rubio for president, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned. Chris Chocola, the former Indiana congressman who was president of the Club for Growth from 2009 to 2014, tells TWS the Florida senator is a "strong fiscal…

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has announced that South Carolina governor Nikki Haley will deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union.

In this week's edition of the boss's email newsletter (sign up free here!), Bill Kristol conducts the eighth "straw poll" but this time with a twist: fewer candidates and some face-to-face matchups.

I grew up in the next town west of Burns, Oregon, where so-called militia men are occupying a federal building in protest of the federal sentencing of some local ranchers for arson. If you know anything about how sparsely populated Eastern Oregon is, that means Burns is a two hour drive from my…

When asked by Steve Doocy on Fox and Friends on Tuesday morning about how he'd do in New Hampshire, Jeb Bush repeatedly and awkwardly answered that he'd do "better than expected."

On Monday, the Kremlin reported the death of Colonel General Igor Sergun, who has served as head of the GRU, the main intelligence branch of the Russian general staff since late 2011. A short statement posted in Russian on the Kremlin’s website said that Sergun died suddenly on Sunday evening, but…

The boss shares some advice for 2016 pessimists in this week's Kristol Clear newsletter. (Don't get it? Sign up for free today!)

An ad from Make America Awesome, "a SuperPAC dedicated to blocking and reversing Donald Trump’s political ascent," says Trump's real record is him "fighting for himself, not for us."

On Monday, thousands of Iraqi Shiites took to the streets of Baghdad to protest Saudi Arabia's execution of Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr. "We demand that the government close the Saudi embassy, kick out the ambassador and boycott all Saudi products," said one protestor, a sentiment echoed by many.…

Des Moines

Hillary Clinton often cites her work with Russia as a foreign policy success. However, as with much of her work as secretary of state, the success of the Russian reset has come into question—even by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

The Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., has made arrests in a marijuana distribution case.

President Barack Obama will announce executive actions regarding gun control tomorrow in the East Room of the White House. The remarks will be delivered at 11:40 a.m.

The Donald Trump and John Kasich campaigns are out with their debut television ads. Ted Cruz's affiliated Super PACs, meanwhile, are out with some big ad buys themselves, which attack Marco Rubio.

Davenport, Iowa

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Jonathan V. Last on why sexism is not a good issue for Team Hillary.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Florida Senator Marco Rubio are focusing their efforts on New Hampshire this week in the shadow of the Iowa caucuses.

An ABC News reporter asked Bill Clinton whether his past is fair game in the 2016 presidential election. Clinton appeared flustered and unsure what to say:

Historical analogies are the last refuge of politicians seeking to justify a policy indefensible on its own merits. Such is the case when it comes to determining policies towards prospective Muslim immigrants. Proponents of allowing these refugees into the country are in difficulty. It seems (1)…

The latest epside of Conversations With Bill Kristol features Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Here's video of Donald Trump's first TV ad of the 2016 election:

NBC's Chuck Todd had to ask Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul whether he's actually still running. The question came in an interview yesterday:

Cheer up!

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump accused his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, of causing "tremendous death." Trump made the claim this morning in an interview with CBS:

Saturday the French ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud downplayed the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic facilities in Iran. Following the execution of controversial Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Iranian mobs surely backed by the clerical regime set fire to the Saudi embassy in…

2015 was a bad year for Warren Buffett, oil and natural gas producers, U.S. coal companies, taxicab companies and their lenders, currency traders who thought the yuan could only go up, the New York Giants, Marissa Mayer, university administrators, and Trump haters.

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