February 2016

I've received lots of emails over the last few days from acquaintances and correspondents writing in the hope that I convey their strong feelings about a possible Trump nomination to those with the resources or political clout to do something about it. I thought a few representative ones might be…

Attorney General Loretta Lynch refused to tell Fox News' Bret Baier whether a grand jury has been convened in the Hillary Clinton investigation.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch insisted to Fox News' Bret Baier that the Justice Department is not briefing the White House on the investigation into Hillary Clinton and her emails.

John McCormack appeared this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe to discuss Donald Trump, the Ku Klux Klan, and the 2016 presidential election:

Jeffrey H. Anderson writes the Wall Street Journal about his new tax plan -- the Main Street Tax Plan -- and how it compares to that of the remaining candidates:

Ben Sasse, the Republican senator from Nebraska elected in 2014, told CNN's Jake Tapper Monday that he would support a third-party candidate if the GOP nominates Donald Trump and Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton. Sasses also said he expects more candidates to enter the presidential race.

CBS chief Leslie Moonves said Donald Trump's run for president has been good business for his network, adding that he hopes the presidential campaign "circus" this year continues.

A new ad from a super PAC backing Marco Rubio expresses stupefaction that Donald Trump is a serious presidential candidate, following the New York businessman's KKK blunder.

The news last week was that The New Republic had been sold. After the magazine's turbulent tenure under Facebook mogul Chris Hughes, it was purchased by Win McCormack, an Oregon resident. At first glance this seems like a good fit. McCormack co-founded Mother Jones, another liberal publication, and…

"Congratulations" the Wall Street Journal wrote in late 2009. "You're about to own $100 billion a year in student loans." They weren't kidding.

Having inexplicably loomed beneath the surface during most of the GOP presidential campaign, has Obamacare now emerged as a major weakness of Donald Trump? The issue's ultimate effect on the Republican frontrunner will largely hinge on whether Ted Cruz decides to release an Obamacare alternative…

On Sunday, Marco Rubio made fun of a sore spot for Donald Trump—his stubby hands.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on why Super Tuesday is important for anti-Trump Republicans.

Following Donald Trump's refusal to disavow former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke's support, days after initially disavowing, Trump is now claiming he couldn't hear CNN host Jake Tapper.

Chris Casteel reports at NewsOK.com:

The latest Conversations With Bill Kristol features chess master and human rights activist Garry Kasparov:

During the last Republican presidential debate in Texas, Donald Trump spoke of his sister, a liberal activist judge who he says would make a “phenomenal" Supreme Court justice, and defended her against criticism she has received "for signing a certain bill"—his words—from the bench. He then said…

A new ad from the Emergency Committee for Israel is out today. The ad is titled, "Trump Loves Dictators."

On Sunday, Senator Ben Sasse articulated his rationale for opposing Donald Trump in a lengthy Facebook post. The post, titled, "AN OPEN LETTER TO TRUMP SUPPORTERS," reads:

On Sunday, Senator Jeff Sessions endorsed Donald Trump.

A Note from Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editor

Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, criticized Donald Trump's unwillingness to denounce the Ku Klux Klan Sunday.

CNN reports that on Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden spoke in Mexico City and "came close to offering an apology for comments made by Republicans about Mexico and Mexican immigrants on the campaign trail."

Purcellville, Va.

Ballet is a curious genre. Its bones are French; the pliées and relevées, and pas. But the ballets of the popular imagination are Russian: Swan Lake, the Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty. While Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre has better name recognition in the States, St. Petersburg boasts the Mariinsky…

In 1998, Justice Antonin Scalia attended the funeral service for Justice Lewis Powell at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia. At the luncheon afterwards Scalia looked for the church's pastor, the Rev. James Goodloe. Unable to find him, Scalia wrote Goodloe a letter telling him…

Days ago, former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke stated his support for Donald Trump. On Friday, Trump addressed it with, "I didn't even know he endorsed me. David Duke he endorsed me, OK? I disavow. OK?"

Early on Sunday, Donald Trump tweeted this:

During a Donald Trump Tennessee rally on Saturday, Chris Christie shakes hands with Trump as he enters. Trump appears to whisper to him, "get on the plane and go home."

After it was revealed this summer that Planned Parenthood was selling the organs and body parts of aborted human beings to biotech companies, Donald Trump said he wasn't sure if the organization should lose its federal funding. He even went out of his way to praise Planned Parenthood's good work.…

The press was forbidden from filming Hillary Clinton boarding her private plane, said an ABC reporter covering the leading Democratic candidate.

Chris Christie, who ran for president on the sober promise to "tell it like it is" and whose campaign was built around the urgency of entitlement reform and restoring U.S. national security, on Friday endorsed Donald Trump, a national security ignoramus who is running for president adamantly…

President Bill Clinton's former labor secretary, Robert Reich, is endorsing Bernie Sanders.

The Democratic candidates, one a professed Socialist, offer a different road to fiscal disaster – more spending. There is a slight variation on the spending theme. Bernie Sanders would ramp up spending by $18 trillion in the next decade by lowering interest rates on student loans, providing free…

At today's press conference announcing New Jersey governor Chris Christie's endorsement, Donald Trump was asked about another endorsement he received recently from white supremacist David Duke.

After undercover videos released in July showed that Planned Parenthood was involved in the trafficking of aborted baby body parts, Donald Trump said he wasn't sure if the Planned Parenthood should lose all of its federal funding. He later shifted, saying: "I wouldn't do any funding as long as they…

South Carolina is not feeling the Bern. Currently, there's a minuscule crowd for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

At a rally in Fort Worth, Texas today, Donald Trump unloaded on Amazon.com founder and owner of the Washington Post Jeff Bezos.

During Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, Marco Rubio repeatedly attacked Donald Trump for his use of illegal immigrant labor to build Trump Tower.

Trump "won" the Hispanic vote in Nevada, the argument goes. But there's a primary cause to Donald Trump's reported success with Hispanics.

Citing a "good and loyal" friendship, New Jersey governor and former presidential candidate Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump for president at an event in Ft. Worth Friday.

Donald Trump had a complete meltdown Thursday night when he got locked in this exchange with Marco Rubio over health care. Rubio kept pressing him on what his plan for health care was, and Trump responded by incoherently talking about getting rid of "the lines around the states." Essentially, Trump…

Marco Rubio delivered a performance in Dallas Friday that would have made Donald Trump proud—if Trump hadn't been the target.

Both Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz hit Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in Thursday's debate over questions about Trump University.

A new ad by the super PAC supporting Marco Rubio hits Donald Trump for mistreating workers, disabled veterans, and an elderly widow whose home Trump wanted for a casino parking lot. Watch it here:

With Super Tuesday just days away, Donald Trump is set to win a large number of contests. However, the delegate math means it is unlikely he will walk away with so many delegates as to make him unstoppable.

On Friday morning, George Stephanopoulos asked Marco Rubio if his good debate performace was "too little, too late."

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview this morning that the FBI investigation into her is "not at all political." Clinton did, though, call the investigation "a security inquiry," actively playing down the severity of the matter.

The Scrapbook begs to be forgiven for its belly laugh at Time’s new list of the 100 most popular female authors on college campuses. Not because Time is now reduced to promoting listicles on its website, but because Time's popular female author No. 97 is none other than Evelyn Waugh. Waugh…

Anger is all the rage these days in American politics. A recent New York Times column bore the headline “The Year of the Angry Voter," while an earlier Washington Post story read "It's Not Just Trump: Voter Anger Fuels Outsider Candidates." Our nation's choleric mood has not gone unnoticed in other…

Between the middle of 2014 and early 2016, oil prices tumbled from $110 to between $30 and $35 per barrel, a drop of 70 percent. The change represents an enormous shift of income from oil-exporting countries to oil-importing countries: $1.6 trillion annually, slightly more than 2 percent of the…

The Scrapbook is old enough to remember without fondness the astounding spectacle of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1987 leading Stanford University students chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho! Western culture's got to go!" The witless infantilism of the chant perfectly encapsulated its substantive content:…

Whenever I’m driving with my wife, I have this nasty habit of smacking her in the face. No, it's not because of the innumerable times she says, "It's green. You can go now." Or "Slow down, there's a stop sign." It's not even when she thinks I don't see the car in front of me braking and yells, "Oh,…

I have always admired Franklin Delano Roosevelt as an inspiring patriot. But I've also never moved past my first impression of him as an authoritarian. I still hold this general opinion after reading this splendid book; the difference is that Man of Destiny has amplified the intensity of it. I now…

The Welsh-born Philip Jenkins holds the title of distinguished professor of history at Baylor, and he is also an emeritus professor of humanities at Penn State, where he holds an endowed chair. His specialty over more than 35 years of scholarship has been the study of Christianity in both its…

Ithaca, N.Y.—an Ivy League town that proudly styles itself America's "most enlightened city"—provides a home for plenty of unusual ideas from the political left. The most recent among them is a publicly financed "shooting gallery" .  .  . for heroin users.

Congress spent $310 billion last year on some 250 agencies and programs that were no longer — as required under the law and Congress's own rules — authorized to receive and spend funds. This problem of "expired authorizations" has grown with the ever-expanding size of government; and it contributes…

What is fiction for? Bernard Harrison’s answers to the question are the traditional ones long taken for granted by almost all those who care about plays, short stories, and novels. Literature, if it is any good, is "one of the chief engines of self-understanding." At the same time, literature has…

Young voters love Bernie Sanders. According to entrance and exit polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders beat Hillary Clinton among voters under 30 by nearly six-to-one.

Every once in a while—in a long, long while—justice is served. Even at the university. Late last week the University of Missouri Board of Curators announced that, after a month of investigation, it was terminating the employment of Professor Melissa Click.

In 1989, I lived a block away from the embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, D.C. It sat on Connecticut Avenue, a major thoroughfare that runs from the White House past the city limits. In the spring of that year, as pro-democracy protests swelled in Beijing, crowds of Chinese…

Much ink has been spilled over the rising oceans, the warming globe, and the imminent demise of Arctic and Antarctic creatures. The ice is melting, the penguins are sweating, and the sky is falling, all at once. At least, that is how the story usually goes.

No one really believes that the Syria truce scheduled to begin February 26—to bring a "cessation of hostilities" to the nearly five-year-old conflict—is going to hold. And nearly everyone, at home and abroad, agrees that the problem with the agreement John Kerry worked out with his Russian…

Following his primary victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, Donald Trump has established himself as the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. He has done so offering grandiose slogans — He'll Make America Great Again! He'll have us win so much we'll get…

Las Vegas

Calais

I would like to report that, as a committed contrarian, I was less impressed by the theatrical sensation called Hamilton than everybody else has been. Alas, I can't. Hamilton, which I only saw this past week even though it opened over the summer, is everything you've heard—and if you haven't heard…

When Ronald Reagan ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, the top issue was the sour economy. Reagan’s solution was a 30 percent, across-the-board cut in individual income tax rates. As nominee, he stuck with the big tax-cut as his main message. And he followed through as…

‘You inspire us all." With that fulsome greeting, Pat Robertson welcomed Donald Trump this week to the stage of Regent University. According to the school's catalogue, the university's name invokes the fact that "a regent is one who represents Christ, our Sovereign, in whatever sphere of life he or…

Conservative TV and radio host Glenn Beck has endorsed Ted Cruz. He’s appeared at rallies for Cruz and spoken passionately about the need to elect a constitutional conservative like the Texas senator. He's suggested electing either Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio would inspire a "violent…

Over the course of the last 48 hours, the Rubio campaign pulled one of the great head-fakes in recent political history by telegraphing that they weren’t at all interested in attacking Donald Trump at tonight's debate.

Following Thursday's Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump discussed an instance in which he had to hire foreign workers.

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

During Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump was asked about being neutral with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Marco Rubio turned a familiar line of attack against Donald Trump at Thursday night's GOP debate, tripping the Republican frontrunner for repeating the same detail about his health care platform and passing it off as his plan in full.

During Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump was asked, "If the Mexicans don't pay for the wall, will you start a trade war with Mexico?"

In his indispensible newsletter, the Transom, Ben Domenech makes a profound observation about tonight’s debate: The best way to become the "Not Trump," is to beat Trump. And the way to beat him isn't to argue that he's a meanie or detail his ideological inconsistencies. It's to go full-alpha and…

A new poll of likely Virginia Republican primary voters shows Donald Trump with a 14-point lead over his closest competitor, Florida senator Marco Rubio. In the Monmouth University poll, Trump has support from 41 percent of those surveyed, with Rubio earning 27 percent support.

A great many people have argued in recent days that Marco Rubio's strategy—of not attacking Donald Trump, playing for second, and hoping the field gets culled—looks like a political loser. A newly released Florida Quinnipiac poll offers further evidence to support this claim. The poll finds that,…

The latest Marco Rubio email ad borrows the siren from the Drudge Report to ask supporters for money. The siren, Drudge's breaking news gif, appears three times in the email.

Veterans-in-Command, a Queens, New York-based vets group, was in serious need of a cash infusion when it asked Donald Trump for help last year. Trump wasn’t yet a candidate, but Veterans-in-Command official Rodney Moore told the New York Daily News last month that the group might grab the Donald's…

There's an old truism in sports that says if you allow an underdog to hang around long enough, he just might win. Such has been the case with Donald Trump.

The COP 21 climate conference held in Paris in December was no low-budget affair. Two different expenditures for hotels alone for the gathering came to over $2.5 million. A single contract alone came to almost $2 million. That contract involved five different hotels and totaled and estimated…

Last month, Ted Cruz released an ad attacking Donald Trump for trying to use eminent domain to bulldoze a widow's home in order to build a parking lot for limos in Atlantic City. Trump didn't succeed, but the fact he tried makes him look like an almost cartoonish movie villain:

The notion of Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, once widely thought to be an impossibility, is now widely being described—in respectable circles, nonetheless—as a near-inevitability. Generally sensible and level-headed people are starting to concoct all sorts of crazy plans to…

Rhetoric got heated at a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton featuring the Democratic frontrunner’s husband, Bill Clinton. In fact, a sitting U.S. congressman promised the crowd of Hillary Clinton loyalists that their candidate would "kill" the Republican frontrunner.

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney discussed the 2016 race with Neil Cavuto. Romney said, "There's no question that Donald Trump has but the clearest path to becoming the Republican nominee," adding that the field narrowing would help a non-Trump candidate.

Rick Perry was vindicated today, when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals tossed the last of the criminal case that derailed Perry's presidential bid last year. As governor of Texas, Perry had threatened to veto funding to the Texas "Public Integrity Unit," a creature of the liberal Travis County…

Last night at Ted Cruz's election night party in Nevada, following the news that he placed third there, his well known surrogate Glenn Beck assured supporters that Cruz is "not a liar."

A local affiliate of CBS in New York is reporting that Charles Rangel, the embattled former chair of the House Ways & Means Committee, is retiring after 23 terms in the House of Representatives.

One of the (many) oddities of the 2016 Republican race is how perverted our language has become in categorizing the candidates. Marco Rubio is the "establishment" candidate. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are "anti-establishment." Neither of these definitions really fits what's going on.

A Texas appeals court has dismissed the remaining criminal charge that a grand jury brought against former Texas governor Rick Perry in 2014.

There's more than one problem with the lawsuit brought by the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School murder victims against Remington Outdoor Company and its subsidiary Bushmaster Firearms, and it's not just with the safeguards granted by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which…

Ardit Ferizi, 20, appeared in federal court in Alexandria at the end of January, in what may be the first legal case in the United States involving terrorism and computer hacking. The proceeding shows how a simple network of operatives and computers is used by the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS)…

Testifying this morning before a House Appropriations subcommittee, Attorney General Loretta Lynch was asked by Rep. John Carter (R-TX) about the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server and its role in handling classified and secret information.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the state of the GOP primary race, and what Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio need to do to challenge Trump on super Tuesday.

For a special state of the race edition of Conversations with Bill Kristol, former senator and energy secretary Spencer Abraham and TWS staff writer Jay Cost join Bill Kristol to discuss the Trump phenomenon -- as well as upcoming primaries.

Donald Trump, having won the Nevada caucuses, is now two primary victories from defeating his top two rivals and claiming the Republican presidential nomination.

We seem to be particularly susceptible to fatalism. Modern doctrines of science and history incline us philosophically in that direction. The experience of mass movements and mass effects seems to suggest individuals can do little to affect the course of events. When we do indulge our hopes and…

GOP voters are in a fighting mood. They aren't much interested in business-as-usual, political niceties, or even conservative purity. They want someone who will take it to Washington—someone who will go there and fight for change.

Donald Trump has yet to win an outright majority in a primary or caucus – though he's getting closer, pulling in 46 percent of the vote in Nevada. But he's winning massive numbers of votes.

John Kasich wondered about his purpose in the presidential race during separate campaign stops in Georgia on Tuesday.

Donald Trump is the projected winner in tonight's Nevada caucuses.

Hillary Clinton put something in her mouth during Tuesday's CNN town hall. It was likely a cough drop, as she coughed throughout the live event:

Hillary Clinton told CNN's Chris Cuomo that she is "well aware of the drip, drip, drip" in regard to her email scandal.

At tonight's CNN townhall in South Carolina, Hillary Clinton said she'd release the transcripts to her Wall Street speeches when "everybody does it."

During CNN's Democratic presidential town hall, Bernie Sanders announced he would release the content of his paid speeches to Wall Street.

As far back as November, Ted Cruz began using the hashtag "#TrusTed." Now, "TrusTed" is often used in Cruz's ads, on banners behind him during events, on his campaign bus, and elsewhere.

Hillary Clinton's campaign manager is blaming a "right wing" group for the Democratic frontrunner's email troubles. Robbie Mook made the claim of the right wing conspiracy in an interview this afternoon on CNN.

Former President Bill Clinton is celebrating fifteen years of the Clinton Foundation. Clinton's calling his work there a success -- and asking supporters to pitch in more money to keep the work going.

Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who sits on the Senate Judiciary committee, put it plainly. “There'll be no hearing, no votes until the next president," Graham said Tuesday as he left the first weekly GOP conference meeting since the death of Antonin Scalia.

CNN will no longer invite Donald Trump backer and former aide Roger Stone on its network, per a report.

On Tuesday, Van Jones and Bakari Sellers discussed the democratic presidential race on CNN.

During President Obama's press conference about closing Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday, he wrongly stated the name of the Boston Marathon bomber as, "Zohar Zaniev." In fact, the terrorist is named Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Presidential candidate Marco Rubio responded sternly Tuesday to President Obama's latest overture to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility.

A former detainee hold at Gitmo has been arrested for ties to the Islamic State.

For most of America, there's only one election in 2016 that matters. But another one taking place over in the U.K. also bears watching. In May, London will elect its new mayor. And the story behind the frontrunner, Sadiq Khan, makes it worth briefly shifting attention from South Carolina to South…

Donald Trump fondly remembered the "old days" during a rally Monday night, when a protester who interrupted his event would've been socked in the face and "carried out on a stretcher."

On Monday night, John Kasich told Megyn Kelly he has no intention of dropping out of the 2016 race. She asked about the prospect of him leaving the race.

Spike Lee has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. The Lee endorsment comes in the form of a radio ad, saying that "When he gets into the White House, he will do the right thing."

The White House just announced the president will deliver a statement on Guantanamo later this morning at the White House.

Donald Trump gets audited every year by the IRS. The Republican frontrunner made the revelation in an interview today with radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Bolivians voted Sunday on an amendment that would allow sitting president Evo Morales to run for a fourth term in 2019. Morales, who took office in 2006, officially ends his term in 2020. As the results trickle in, it appears that a little over half (adjust accordingly for corruption, of course) of…

Ted Cruz has asked one of his top advisers to resign Tuesday, according to media reports. Rick Tyler, who is Cruz's communications director and the chief spokesman for the campaign, publicized a news story and video Sunday that falsely stated Marco Rubio mocked a Cruz staffer for reading the Bible.

Arizona senator Jeff Flake has endorsed his Senate colleague Marco Rubio for president, the Rubio campaign announced Monday.

As Donald Trump tries to notch his third win in a row in Tuesday's Nevada caucuses, his two chief challengers for the Republican nomination appear to be more concerned with fighting it out for second place.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on whether any contenders will take the fight to Trump.

On Monday, C-SPAN tweeted a clip of then-senator Joe Biden saying President George H.W. Bush should wait until after the November election to name a nominee.

In the aftermath of Justice Scalia's untimely passing, the outpouring of remembrances describe his astonishing legal career: a Supreme Court justice, of course, and before that a D.C. Circuit judge, a University of Chicago law professor, and chief of the Ford Administration's Office of Legal…

During a Virginia town hall on Monday, John Kasich said something that raised eyebrows.

The Republican National Committee is out with a new video, titled, "The Clintons Hope You Forgot."

On Sunday, Rubio staffer Joe Pounder posted this tweet, suggesting Ted Cruz's communications director, Rick Tyler, posted an article containing false information about Rubio.

Lebanese media reports that the man who hit the late Christopher Hitchens in an altercation in Beirut in 2009 has been killed in Syria, fighting alongside forces allied with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Adonis Nasr, an information officer with the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), often…

Hillary Clinton's latest criticism of Bernie Sanders is that the socialist senator from Vermont is offering the American people "free everything." Clinton made the criticism in the lead up to the Nevada caucuses:

The move

It’s the most repeated meme on cable news the past 24 hours: The South Carolina primary has picked every nominee since 1980, with the exception of Newt Gingrich in 2012. Every candidate who, like Donald Trump, has won New Hampshire and South Carolina has gone on to become the GOP nominee.

There seem to me to be two dominant scenarios for what happens next in the Republican presidential race. For now I'll just sketch them out, in the interest of stimulating thought and commentary rather than asserting a conclusion.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the results of last night's South Carolina primary.

In his speech following the South Carolina Republican primary, Ted Cruz said that “we are the only campaign that has beaten, and can beat, Donald Trump." The second part of that (the "can beat" part) is certainly debatable—Marco Rubio would beg to differ, and perhaps neither one of them can beat…

Charleston, S.C.

As Jeb Bush exits the presidential race and Donald Trump marches on as the Republican frontrunner, it’s worth considering a counterfactual: Without Bush, would Trump's candidacy have even gotten off the ground?

It is getting nasty on the Democratic side. This evening, a Hillary Clinton spokesman accussed the Bernie Sanders campaign of spreading "bullshit."

On Saturday night, before all of the South Carolina primary results were in, Jeb Bush announced he would be dropping out of the race. He is expected to come in 4th or 5th in South Carolina.

The Associated Press has projected Hillary Clinton the winner of the Nevada caucuses:

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Justice and probably the most impressive member of the British Parliament, has issued a statement on the European Union referendum. Here are the highlights:

North Charleston, S.C.

Charleston, S.C.

This is not a good time to be a banker. Any kind of banker. Our central bankers are alternately accused of having kept interest rates too low for too long, and of raising them too soon. Overseas they are accused of being unable to drive down their currency so as to rescue an economy from decades of…

Representatives from two more veterans’ groups listed by the Donald J. Trump Foundation as recipients of donations from the Republican presidential candidate's January 28 fundraiser say their organizations have received donations. Earlier this week, I spoke to representatives of nine other groups,…

Rarely has the United States been so neatly split as it is now. One party holds complete control of Congress while the other holds the presidency--a scenario that has happened only a quarter of the time since 1855.

In the New Hampshire primary, Donald Trump benefitted from a cluster of his rivals competing for second place. Polling showed that no one among Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush was poised to surge on election day and come within shouting distance of the frontrunner. As a result,…

As political Washington wonders who will (sooner or later) replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died during his sleep a week ago, the more pressing question really is who will replace him in the mirth department. Scalia was that good at humor, and many of his most memorable quips came from the bench…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on Donald Trump, South Carolina, Scalia's replacement, and more.

Socialism is now "mainstream," according to the vice president of the United States. Joe Biden made the comments in an interview with Politico:

Michael Steel, a Jeb Bush campaign spokesman, was asked at least four times whether Bush would drop out after the South Carolina primary:

In an unusual move at last night's Democratic town hall, Bernie Sanders was asked a question by a Hillary Clinton campaign volunteer. The question was about veterans issues and was read off a piece of paper.

The most unpopular part of Obamacare now has a champion in the Republican presidential field. Via the Right Scoop, Donald Trump was asked on Thursday night by CNN's Anderson Cooper, "If…there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, what's to—why would an insurance company not have a…

Hillary Clinton was with Britney Spears last night in Las Vegas, according to pictures published by the pop star.

The science of climate change may or may not be the certain thing that the president claims it is, but surely certain is the fact that he can push the Constitution only so far before the Supreme Court pushes back. Which is what it has done by granting the request of 29 states and several business…

In California news, activists are angling for a new “wildlife overpass" to allow mountain lions to cross L.A.'s busy 101 Freeway. This would help boost the population and health of the big cats by making them more mobile and thus diversifying the leonine gene pool. The cost is estimated to be $38…

To hear some on the left tell it, the Supreme Court would be hamstrung if it had to function for a year or more without a ninth justice. What to do in the event of a 4-4 tie? This would not have been viewed as a problem, however, by America's Founders, who created a Court with an even number of…

Voters in the United Kingdom will be choosing — in a referendum to be held by the end of next year, and perhaps as early as June — whether or not to stay in the European Union. Barack Obama wants the U.K. to stay put and is reportedly planning "a big, public reach-out" to persuade Brits to stick…

If politics is the art of the possible, as Bismarck once said, then The Scrapbook’s corollary is especially germane these days: Politics is the art of getting away with as much hypocrisy as possible. Both parties are prone to this annoying habit, of course; but in the week since the sudden death of…

A quartet of Illinois lawmakers have put forward a bill to amend the State Commemorative Dates Act and declare President Barack Obama’s birthday a legal holiday. Under the legislation, August 4 would not only be a day off for Illinois state employees, it would be an occasion "to hold appropriate…

President Obama says he soon will nominate someone to fill the vacancy opened by the unexpected death of Supreme Court associate justice Antonin Scalia. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says his chamber will block any nominee the president sends up.

The stunning success of the giggly, extremely violent, and incredibly foul-mouthed comic book movie Deadpool—it earned $152 million in a single weekend when its studio expected half that—is nothing less than a pivot point in the history of popular culture. It marks the moment when the Hollywood…

Kyoto

Presidential campaigns are never perfect. Troubles occur. What is supposed to happen doesn't happen. There's an old saying that no one has ever become a better person for having run for president. That's about as close to a reliable expectation of presidential campaigns as there is.

A description of one of the characters in Great Expectations would apply to Doug Wilder, the nation’s first elected black governor: "A sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness." Like the half-god, half-man, L. Douglas Wilder boldly goes about his many labors, consistently defying the odds…

Striking the right balance between justice and security remains the most neuralgic point in American politics. Campaigning for the White House in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had gotten it badly wrong: They were trampling on civil liberties with torture,…

"It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself fully as what it is."

As I watched the last few Republican debates, I was distracted, not for the first time, by a most nonpolitical thought: Don't they feel silly all wearing blue suits, white shirts, and red ties?

In January, The Scrapbook was privileged to be in attendance at a speech Antonin Scalia gave to a small audience at Catholic University. We can’t claim to have known the man or even to have met him for more than a handshake, but Scalia was such a presence that even being in the same room with him…

A few days before Justice Antonin Scalia passed away, I stumbled upon a monograph published in 1979 by the American Enterprise Institute, a debate titled "A Constitutional Convention: How Well Would It Work?" The subject matter, though interesting, paled in comparison to the names of the…

Donald Trump is succeeding, we're told, because he appeals to angry voters — but that's obvious; tell me more. Why are they angry, and how does he appeal to them? In 2016, Americans want to vote for a person and not a white paper. If you care about America's fate under Obama, naturally you are…

The literary critic Edmund Wilson was ambivalent about the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, but he didn't doubt Lincoln's genius as a writing man. "Alone among American Presidents," Wilson wrote, "it is possible to imagine Lincoln, grown up in a different milieu, becoming a distinguished writer of a not…

The February 13 debate in South Carolina provided a clarifying moment for this year's GOP presidential race. Donald Trump claimed that the administration of George W. Bush had engaged in a massive conspiracy to mislead the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "They lied," Trump…

"The presidency is not some Jet Ski that you ride over the waves of partisanship." (Linda Overby, Hillary Clinton supporter, to the Washington Post, February 15, 2016.)

‘Why did we live? Was that all? Why was I not born in Central Africa and died young. Poor Henry James thinks it all real, I believe, and actually still lives in that dreamy, stuffy Newport and Cambridge, with papa James and Charles Norton—and me! Yet, why!" Thus, writing to a friend, Henry Adams…

BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott report that—contrary to Republican frontrunner Donald Trump's claims—Trump actually supported the Iraq war in 2002:

How much money has Donald Trump donated to the veterans? That seemingly simple question has anything but a simple answer. When Trump held his January 28 fundraiser for the vets after backing out of the Republican debate in Iowa, his campaign wasn’t shy about sharing the good news: Trump had helped…

Vice President Joe Biden does not want to serve on the Supreme Court. But, he signaled to MSNBC, it would be hard for him to pass on the opportunity if offered by the president of the United States.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the Pope's comments about Donald Trump, and South Carolina.

John Kasich and Marco Rubio have both taken softer tones in recent weeks. Ted Cruz is apparently trying to do the same.

Pope Francis caused quite a stir in the GOP presidential race on Thursday when he responded to a question about Donald Trump's position on immigration. When a reporter told the pope that Trump wants to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall and "deport 11 million illegal immigrants, separating families,"…

Donald Trump looks to be cruising to a solid victory in the South Carolina primary, but there is evidence that his debate performance might have hurt him—at least on the margins. Seven pollsters* have conducted surveys that were in the field mostly after the debate, and the average result is:

A former Georgia congressman supporting Ted Cruz for president called Donald Trump’s recent comments about George W. Bush and the September 11 attacks "ridiculous."

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that, for the first time in the past 100 days (based on polling listed by Real Clear Politics), Donald Trump trails nationally in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The WSJ/NBC poll was taken entirely after the South Carolina GOP…

Former United Nations ambassador Bill Richardson has long been boastful of his close relations with the North Korean regime. During his misbegotten 2008 presidential campaign, Richardson bragged often of his tight relations with the Kim dynasty, among sundry other tyrannies, including Cuba and…

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio need a pep talk from Herm Edwards: “You play to win the game. You play to win the game."

President Obama confirmed reports that he would travel to Cuba in a statement issued Thursday morning.

Reviews of Justice Antonin Scalia’s career tend to focus on legal philosophy and political outcomes. But generations from now, Scalia's writings will still be studied for his political philosophy: his practical understanding of how and why American government works, and doesn't. And the battle over…

Senator Tom Cotton is criticizing Apple for not obeying a judge and helping the FBI investigate the San Bernardino terrorists.

The Jeb Bush campaign announced that former first lady Barbara Bush would again hit the campaign trail for her son. Barbara Bush is expected to do 2 meet and greets and a town hall.

On Wednesday, during a town hall event, Mika Brzezinski read Donald Trump a passage describing a candidate. At the end, she asked Trump, "Who am I describing?"

"Don't move, don't speak, even whisper," Jesse Hughes sang into the microphone. No chance.

On Wednesday, MSNBC showed a clip of Jeb Bush at a campaign event. The former Republican frontrunner appeared frustrated.

On Wednesday, just days before the South Carolina primary, S.C. governor Nikki Haley is endorsing Marco Rubio for president. Rubio is already endorsed by S.C. senator Tim Scott.

South Carolina governor Nikki Haley will endorse Marco Rubio for president. The Post and Courier reports:

One of the virtues of the political insurgencies of this presidential campaign has been that they have forced both parties to confront difficult questions that most mainstream politicians have preferred to ignore. On the domestic policy front, the unavoidable issue is the plight of the working…

Donald Trump elaborated on his opinion of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation of terrorist suspects Wednesday by saying, flat-out, "Torture works."

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with Adam J. White, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, on replacing the late Justice Scalia.

Last week, the United States Senate unanimously passed a bill to rename the street that the Chinese embassy sits on in Washington from International Place to Liu Xiaobo Plaza. Liu, of course, is the dissident Chinese intellectual who has been imprisoned since 2008 for signing the pro-democracy…

It's raining in Washington. While inconvenient, you wouldn't think this would affect metro users very much, because, after all, the majority of the lines run underground. Which is why commuters taking the train from Virginia into D.C. got a surprise when they discovered that it was raining inside…

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid took to the pages of the Washington Post recently to write about Republican efforts to block any nominee to replace Justice Scalia. In drearily predictable fashion, the op-ed is headlined, "For the good of the country, stop your nakedly partisan obstruction."

In the South Carolina Republican debate, Ted Cruz said of fellow Republican senator Marco Rubio, “Marco went on Univision in Spanish and said he would not rescind President Obama's illegal executive amnesty on his first day in office." Rubio replied, "I don't know how he knows what I said on…

Over the past several months, Marco Rubio has been striking an increasingly emotive tone on issues ranging from abortion to poverty. On Monday, he continued to build upon that.

Beaufort, S.C.

The latest Nevada poll finds that Donald Trump is dominating the early state with 45 percent. Jeb Bush, on the other hand, is at a mere 1 percent in the poll.

Bernie Sanders got a pretty sizable crowd last night at Morehouse College, an historically black college in Atlanta.

It's exactly what you might have expected. Larry Sanders, the brother of one of the top Democratic party contenders, is a health care spokesman for the British Green Party.

Since arriving in the U.S. Senate in 2011, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has made many of his colleagues crazy. Unwilling to go along to get along, Lee has called out publicly our nation's legislature for its profligacy and habit of showing up for work barely half the year. Six months into his time in…

The latest survey of likely GOP primary voters in Virginia from polling firm Overtime Politics gives Trump a 14-point lead over Rubio, 33 percent to 19 percent. John Kasich comes in third place at 14 percent, followed by Ted Cruz at 12 percent and Jeb Bush and Ben Carson at 8 percent each.

The Times of London reports that for a mere $43,500 per year your child can attend Avenues: The World School in Manhattan, where 4-year olds sit in swivel chairs and are taught in Mandarin or Spanish half of the time. Every student is expected to become a responsible "global citizen" from a "world…

Despite a heavily criticized debate performance Saturday night, Donald Trump continues to lead the South Carolina primary by a comfortable margin, according to a poll released Monday night.

During a South Carolina town hall on Tuesday, Senator Lindsey Graham asked the audience, "how many of you are Democrats?" Jeb Bush raised his hand and smiled. Several audience members laughed.

On Tuesday, Politico reporter Annie Karni tweeted a video of Hillary Clinton with Al Sharpton. Karni tweeted that Clinton's statement in the video was in response to the question, "Will Sharpton endorse Clinton?"

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Knights of Camelot are on a quest for the Holy Grail, but find their way barred by a group of ornery French knights – never mind what they are doing in England – who have walled themselves inside an impregnable castle. After a pathetic attempt to breach the…

The Comedy Central roast of Donald Trump first aired in March 2011. In the roast, several comedians joke about Sarah Palin.

The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol features General David Petraeus:

Hillary Clinton has found a new attack dog. Speaking at a Cleveland event, former first daughter Chelsea Clinton unloaded on her mother's sole Democratic rival.

Most conservatives believe Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have wrong solutions to the stagnation in wages and job creation that has marked the American economy since 2000. But Trump and Sanders have proven better vote-getters than conservative candidates because, politically speaking, having wrong…

Donald Trump threatened to sue his "friend" Ted Cruz on Monday, saying he would initiate legal action against the Texas senator if he didn't "take down his false ads and retract his lies."

Donald Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president, claims in Saturday night's debate that the most recent Republican president, George W. Bush, knowingly and purposefully lied us into war in Iraq.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on Donald Trump's recent 9/11 comments, South Carolina, and more.

At Saturday’s debate in South Carolina, Donald Trump called into question the idea that Jeb Bush's brother, George W. Bush, "kept us safe" by pointing out the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack occurred while the older Bush was president. Trump repeated that attack in a Monday afternoon press…

Donald Trump appeared to threaten former President George W. Bush that "It would be better for him if he stayed out" of the 2016 presidential race. He did not elaborate on what would happen if Bush entered the fray.

Secretary of State John Kerry talked about running for president again. Though the comment appeared to be lighthearted, it comes less than a week after the once-inevitable Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, was trounced in the New Hampshire primary.

Texas senator Ted Cruz put his opposition to the president's pending Supreme Court nominee in the starkest terms yet, saying he would filibuster any name the White House submitted.

The Weekly Standard's Terry Eastland discussed Justice Scalia's nomination on Fox News on Sunday. Watch here:

Ted Cruz's presidential campaign is out with a new ad that questions Donald Trump's fitness to make quality Supreme Court appointments.

On Sunday, Bill Kristol joined ABC's This Week and discussed the process for replacing the late Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court. He also talked about Saturday's GOP debate. Watch:

Some years ago, Tom Wolfe attended a Manhattan fundraising party that composer Leonard Bernstein hosted for his Black Panther pals. The result of the evening was a sardonic piece by Wolfe titled "Radical Chic" which continues to provide us with language to describe an undying phenomena: The…

Ronald Reagan’s "eleventh commandment"—"thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican"—may be an unnecessarily strict standard, but the Republican presidential field could at least try to observe a twelfth commandment: Thou shalt avoid calling one's fellow Republican a liar.

Senator Schumer appeared Sunday on ABC's This Week and responded to suggestions that the Senate might not confirm the lame-duck President's nomination to replace the late Justice Scalia: "show me the clause [in the Constitution] that says [the] president's only president for three years."

One prominent former elected official supporting Donald Trump has declined to criticize the New York businessman for stating President George W. Bush and his administration knowingly lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In an email exchange with THE WEEKLY STANDARD Scott…

The first time I saw Justice Antonin Scalia in the flesh was in college. He came to speak at my school, which was a broadly apolitical place. There were no protests. He gave a brief talk on the idea of originalism—easily the most engaging lecture of my four years—and then he took questions. For…

In 2008, I was invited to judge a wine-and-oyster pairing competition at the Old Ebbitt Grill. It was a great deal: Rank 20 glasses of whites in order of your liking alongside all the Olympia oysters you can eat. Food writers and oenophiles I expected to see there. But Supreme Court Justice Antonin…

A new poll for CBS News found that Florida senator Marco Rubio bested Donald Trump in Saturday night's GOP debate:

It was a wild and woolly debate, with lots of arguments worth commenting on and exchanges worth evaluating. But as is sometimes the case in these debates, only one statement really mattered.

There wasn't much to like in last night's Republican debate in Greenville, South Carolina. I doubt if many people came away from the two-hour squabble feeling better about the GOP or its presidential candidates.

Had Marco Rubio performed a week ago in the New Hampshire debate as he did Saturday night in South Carolina, the Florida senator might have vanquished his non-Trump, non-Cruz rivals for good. Seven days after having the worst debate performances of his presidential campaign, and even less time…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the death of Antonin Scalia.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on Donald Trump's debate performance in South Carolina, and how that might go over with voters.

Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia died today and already the Democratic party is fundraising off his death.

In the past, Donald Trump has praised eminent domain, even calling it, "wonderful." However, During Saturday night's Republican presidential debate he repeated a line he has used in recent debates: "I'm not in love with eminent domain."

During Saturday night's GOP debate, Donald Trump said, "The Iraq War was a big, fat mistake."

Soon after Ed Meese was sworn in as attorney general in early 1985, he organized a group within the Justice Department whose purpose was to advise him, and ultimately President Reagan, on who would be the best candidates to select for the Supreme Court, in the event seats opened. There were about…

The sad passing of Justice Antonin Scalia—who did more than any other member of the judicial branch over the past three decades to exercise judgment instead of will, thereby becoming one of our finest-ever "bulwarks of a limited Constitution"—makes the upcoming presidential election even more…

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell responds to the passing of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia:

When I was first saw the San Antonio newspaper was reporting Nino Scalia's death, I fervently hoped it wasn't true. But then there were other reports, and emails from friends, and hope was replaced by shock, and by grief.

First published November 13, 2006, and re-published today as news breaks of Antonin Scalia's passing:

I thought readers might be interested in this email I received today from a thoughtful Trump supporter ("for now"):

Who'd a thunk it? That's what a famous ventriloquist's dumbest dummy was made to ask on a now-gone radio program whenever he confronted anything new and, to him, inexplicable, although obvious to anyone else. It came to mind when the central bankers of Sweden decided to take current interest rates…

Speaking about the presidential race, businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said he'd do "a better job" than Donald Trump in an interview with Bloomberg Politics.

Now that Bernie Sanders has routed Hillary Clinton by 22 points in New Hampshire, the American people might be curious to learn more about some of his specific policy proposals, starting with his tax plan. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has scored Sanders's plan and has found it would cause the…

It's Hillary Clinton in Oval Office Space, from the production company that brought you Cruz for President.

Donald Trump told supporters in Louisiana Thursday night he wouldn't use a curse word to describe the "political hacks" negotiating America's trade deals. It led to a pledge that he'd swear off the habit for good.

Thursday night at the Democratic debate in Milwaukee, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both had their best debate performance yet. Unfortunately, this doesn't give viewers an idea of a clear winner -- but what the heck, a resounding Democratic primary win doesn't even count as a win these days.

Polls conducted before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary indicated that Republicans were more fired up than Democrats to vote this year. Looks like they've followed through—so far, at least.

Should women be required to register for the Selective Service in case there’s ever a draft again? It's an obvious question now that the Obama administration has ruled—over the objections of the Marine Corps—that all combat roles must be open to women.

On January 29 — not coincidentally, the anniversary of President Obama signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009 — the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced it was proposing new regulations. The EEOC wants to amend its mandatory EEO-1 report so that employers with 100 or…

‘There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe," wrote Winston Churchill in 1946. "It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot .  .  . but no one would listen and one by…

Politicians of both parties have learned in recent decades the perils of being seen handling a disaster poorly — as was the case with George W. Bush following Hurricane Katrina — as well as the potential dividends that come from handling a disaster well. Bill Clinton, after all, helped turn around…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaces No Child Left Behind, unceremoniously ushers Uncle Sam out of a domestic arena like no legislation since welfare reform two decades ago. How in the world did that happen during the hyper-progressive Obama administration?

Hillary Clinton’s loss to Bernie Sanders in the New Hampshire primary wasn't as bad as she'd feared. It was worse. Sanders's margin of victory — 60 percent to 39 percent — was the largest ever by a Democrat who wasn't a sitting president. It was a come-from-behind win: Eight months ago, Sanders was…

There is a sequence in Terry Southern’s first novel, Flash and Filigree (1958), that features a TV show called What's My Disease? It is Southern's version of the once-popular Sunday night show called What's My Line?, during which a panel of four attempted to guess the identity of a mystery guest.

There are jokes, there are inside jokes, and then there is the new movie from the brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, who are without question the most impressive and interesting American filmmakers of our time.

We seem to be at a point in the election season where, to quote George Orwell, “restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." So to restate the obvious: Choosing Donald Trump as the Republican party's nominee would be a mistake. He lacks the character to be a trustworthy…

Not that readers should notice— unless they are old-fashioned enough to send their fan mail to The Scrapbook via the Postal Service—but The Weekly Standard moved its offices last week. This was not a protracted journey: Our new address is just a couple of blocks east of our old address in downtown…

Most student loans in the United States are guaranteed by the federal government. The main difference between private loans and the guaranteed loans is that the former usually come with a higher interest rate: Students generally don’t seek these out until they cannot access guaranteed loans any…

Washington mayor Muriel Bowser has presented plans to open new homeless shelters across the District of Columbia, including along the U Street corridor (a newly hip area of restaurants and bars) and in swanky neighborhoods such as Wisconsin Avenue, blocks from the National Cathedral, where a…

Istanbul

If we were angels, falling to earth -- or space travelers, maybe, gliding down in a shuttlecraft -- the Black Hills would be hard to miss. Eons of geographical grinding have left the small patch of Dakota mountains looking like an archery target, ring inside ring, when seen from above.

When Turkey’s Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk told his mother that he wanted to quit school and be an artist, she gave him an earful:

Paintings are delicate things that don’t much like fire, floods, wars, or general mayhem. Velázquez's masterpiece, Las Meninas, which shows the infanta of Spain with her entourage of ladies-in-waiting, her dwarves, and her calf-size mastiff, certainly has had its share of close calls. To save it…

Nashua, N.H.

After Paul Ryan accepted the position of speaker of the House he did a curious thing, one almost unheard of by modern American politicians: He grew a beard. The reactions generally varied from “rowr, sexy" to "gross, beardo," which was to be expected. But there was another reaction, one even…

The Scrapbook was distressed to read last week that the French education ministry is planning to “simplify" the language, primarily by getting rid of the circumflex. (Hey, we sweated for hours in the college language lab memorizing all those complexities they now want to bulldoze.) So we were…

Amid the incessant clashes of the campaign season, there is at least one thing that pretty much all of the presidential candidates can agree on.

If there’s one thing Donald Trump wants veterans to know, it's that he loves us, he's going to take care of us, and by the way, he's going to rebuild the military so that it's "so big, so strong, so powerful, nobody is going to mess with us." Going into South Carolina — a state where something like…

Mobile

Not news: Harry Reid is talking up a brokered convention.

Mark Halperin of Bloomberg Politics recently ran a focus group with a small number of South Carolina Republicans who remain undecided in the primary. Several of the voters seem open to the idea of supporting Donald Trump, but much of the room tells Halperin they are "troubled" by their collective…

Even though Bernie Sanders has long caucused with the Democrats in the Senate, he was always officially an independent in a nod to his avowedly socialist beliefs.

Among the two candidates whose results look at all like those of an eventual GOP presidential nominee, polling suggests that Ted Cruz would do significantly better than Donald Trump in the general election. According to the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls, Cruz would fare 5 points…

The Supreme Court has granted a stay of a final rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. The rule aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants fueled by fossil sources. It has the dull title, "Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric…

Derek Hunter explains in the Daily Caller why, despite Bernie Sanders winning more of the popular vote, Hillary Clinton leaves New Hampshire with more delegates. In addition to New Hampshire's 24 delegates distributed to candidates according to the percentage of the popular vote they win, it also…

Coming off finishes outside the top three in Iowa and New Hampshire, Ben Carson said Wednesday evening that he's continuing his campaign because he perceives strength in upcoming states.

I've just heard from a political operative whom I've known a long time and whose integrity I trust. This person is working with an organization—not one of the campaigns—that was in the field (using a very reputable pollster) Wednesday night in South Carolina.

It was only a matter of time before Hollywood went after Donald Trump, and just in time for his yuuge win in New Hampshire, Funny or Die brings us Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal: The Movie.

Americans are a trusting people. We trust that our neighbors behave decently inside their own homes and therefore do not see fit to constantly check on them but rather let them live in peace; we trust that our fellow citizens will act with decency in their jobs so we feel comfortable buying a…

Oregon's bike-obsessed congressman is at it again. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat, is petitioning his colleagues to ask the Obama administration to handicap state and local transportation planning decisions to encourage... you guessed it, bicycle use.

Barack Obama's move to the White House was largely due to his success with young people. That's the case in more than just his general election victories, too.

After a poor showing in New Hampshire, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina are suspending their campaigns. Fiorina announced the move today on Twitter.

Bernie Sanders: The first twelve minutes of his speech have nothing to do with politics. Instead, he opens with a mini-lecture on the dialectic of history: suffrage, segregation, Jim Crow, gay marriage. Once he launches into the political portion of his remarks, the speech has a shape, with themes…

Hillary Clinton seems to have learned nothing from last night’s spanking in New Hampshire. Given that she lost every demographic except seniors, one would think that team Clinton would be putting its prodigious war chest into wooing the young (where the young count as anyone under 64). And yet this…

The Hillary Clinton campaign has announced the endorsement of African American mothers. "African American Mothers to Campaign for Hillary Clinton," a campaign press release blares.

The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates said in an interview with Democracy Now! that he would vote for Bernie Sanders in this year's Democratic primary. Coates is a favorite writer of President Barack Obama.

One of the most striking things about the New Hampshire primary, on the GOP side, was how none of the Republican candidates (other than Donald Trump) played to win. Stuart Stevens wrote about this earlier in the week and it's completely true: Trump took a commanding-but hardly unassailable…

In his first two budget proposals, President Obama referred to creating a "new foundation" for the country. He used an intriguing verb to describe the process.

They say that past performances are the best predictors of the future. So far, the 2016 elections are proving the veracity of that point.

With more than 90 percent of the New Hampshire returns having come in, here are a few thoughts:

Our Framers would despair about the winners of the nation's first presidential primaries in New Hampshire. Though polar opposites with very different ideological starting points, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders would have set the Framers' hair – or wigs – on fire. They designed the…

Donald Trump got everything he wanted in New Hampshire primary—and a whole lot more. He's not only a stronger frontrunner in the Republican race than ever; he's now in the driver's seat on the road to the presidential nomination.

Manchester, N.H.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the results of the New Hampshire primary.

Donald Trump won the New Hampshire primary, but his coalition in New Hampshire does not appear much larger than what Pat Buchanan garnered in 1992 or 1996. He is pulling in the same basic coalition, which had a ceiling of about 30 percent nationwide.

Exit polling shows Bernie Sanders winning more female voters than Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night.

No, not Saturday night’s debate: This is Marco's moment.

Earlier tonight, CBS announced the criteria to qualify for the upcoming GOP presidential debate in South Carolina:

Bernie Sanders prepared for his victory speech Tuesday night by shooting hoops. He made every shot.

The Huffington Post's reaction to Donald Trump's win in the New Hampshire primary:

Manchester, N.H.

The Associated Press is projecting Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders the winners in today's New Hampshire primary.

Twitter, like any social network that allows a degree of anonymity, has its problems with trolls and people who spout hateful rhetoric. However, there have also been a number of incidents that have led users to suspect Twitter is lumping mainstream conservative voices in with those who are…

In a new series for Hulu, Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog is back. The lovable, funny puppy puppet voiced by Robert Smigel, is on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Jonathan V. Last on the last hours of the New Hampshire primary.

From the Washington Post: Chief Justice John Roberts is worried about how the public sees the Supreme Court. In a recent speech celebrating Law Day at New England Law-Boston, Roberts discussed (among other things) the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominees, namely how it has evolved—or…

Hillary Clinton's staff told reporters what to write, and they complied.

At a country club (of all places!) in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Monday, Jeb Bush articulated what might be the worst idea for campaign finance reform I have ever heard. John McCormack has the details:

The residents of a tiny New Hampshire locale famous for its midnight voting didn't check a single box for Hillary Clinton.

In the latest installment of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, host Jerry Seinfeld interviews Will Ferrell, who we find sitting on a playground swing. His first words to Seinfeld: "Hey little boy, you like candy?"

Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton "evil" this morning in an interview with MSNBC. The comment came when the hosts asked Trump to name what word he associated with Clinton.

Bill Clinton, speaking to New Hampshire voters, said that he sometimes wishes he were not married to Hillary Clinton:

Few things in life are more fascinating than other people’s money. As the New Hampshire phase of the presidential campaign draws to a close, those of us who are tired of comparing the details of Jeb Bush's plan for medical savings accounts with Bernie Sanders's plan to enroll everybody in Medicare…

Concord, N.H.

Longtime Bill Clinton observer David Maraniss saw the former president campaigning in New Hampshire and shared his thoughts on Twitter.

One lightning rod hasn't endorsed another lightning rod because the second told the first one not to.

Windham, N.H.

We've seen Trumpmentum give way to Cruzmentum, heard rumors about the ascent of Marcomentum, and even seen Gilmentum try to force its way into the mix.

Hampstead, N.H.

Nashua, N.H.

Well, Super Bowl 50 is in the books and the improbable has happened: Peyton Manning has still not officially retired. Forget about the game (pretty lousy), or the commercials (even worse), or the halftime show (about on par with this). The Peyton story is the only one that really matters coming off…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the New Hampshire primary.

Portsmouth, N.H.

The political “establishment" has become a kind of four-letter word, a catchall derogation of those who maintain the status quo in Washington. Alas, this phrase has come to confuse more than clarify.

The Daily Beast is reporting that a small New Hampshire-based veterans charity has refused to appear at a Trump for President rally to accept a $100,000 check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Liberty House objected to it being given to them in a public setting: a campaign rally for Trump…

Peterborough, N.H.

Istanbul

The NFL ran an ad at last night's Super Bowl encouraging "Super Bowl Babies."

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush called the frontrunner, Donald Trump, a "loser" this morning on MSNBC.

In an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton defended Madeleine Albright's claim that "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help women." The comment was widely seen as an attempt to pressure women to vote for Clinton:

There was a bit of a dust-up between the Cruz and Carson campaigns in Iowa. On caucus night, Cruz's campaign sent out a message to supporters telling them that "CNN is reporting Ben Carson will stop campaigning after Iowa" and urging them to tell other caucusgoers this news, and it soon spread from…

Peterborough, N.H.

Londonderry, N.H.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on Rubio's debate performance, Hillary's chances, and the mood in the Granite State.

Back in November, the New York Times reported that Right to Rise, the super PAC that Jeb Bush established, had produced a video casting Marco Rubio as "ultimately unelectable because of his hard-line stand against abortion."

Saturday Night Live did not just take aim at Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. The NBC comedy show also mocked his daughter, Catherine.

Manchester, N.H.

Bedford, N.H.

During the GOP Debate, moderator Mary Katharine Ham asked Marco Rubio about social issues.

Manchester, N.H.

Google Trends regularly tweets out trending questions about candidates and data prior to and during presidential debates.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie went after Florida senator Marco Rubio in Saturday's Republican debate:

At the beginning of Saturday night's Republican presidential debate, the moderators called Ben Carson's name, but for some reason he didn't come out onto the GOP debate stage. He stayed back for a few minutes, and eventually came out. Then the moderators seemed to forget about John Kasich.

Concord, N.H.

Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright said this in support of Hillary Clinton at a campaign rally in New Hampshire: "Just remember: there's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other."

Bedford, N.H.

Carly Fiorina's super PAC is out with a new web ad today mocking ABC for excluding her from tonight's GOP debate in New Hampshire.

In John Kasich's final TV ad pitch to New Hampshire primary voters, the Ohio governor makes a dubious claim. "My record?" Kasich says. "I've cut taxes, balanced budgets, created jobs, rejected Obamacare without leaving anyone behind."

Friday night at a New Hampshire Democratic fundraiser, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders went onstage to make their respective cases to Granite State Democratic influencers.

Investors and traders here were hoping that a spurt in job creation would dispel some of the gloom that has stock markets in turmoil, investors watching a decline in the value of their savings and pensions, and Federal Reserve Board chairwoman Janet Yellen and her monetary policy committee…

Atkinson, N.H.

Donald Trump said Friday that he will participate in the next FOX News-sponsored debate, scheduled for March 3.

It's a tie ball game in the Democratic primary, according to a new national survey of registered voters.

Actor Danny Glover is throwing his support behind Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the week that was in New Hampshire, and what to expect in the upcoming primary.

The Washington Post claims that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has “gained an apparent ally…in her fight to limit the political damage from her growing email controversy."

Donald Trump canceled his only scheduled campaign event in New Hampshire on Friday because it is snowing in the Granite State. "Due to the weather and the airports being closed Mr. Trump is unable to attend today's Town Hall at the Londonderry Lions Club," the Trump campaign said in a press…

The latest dead-on-arrival lame-duck proposal from the White House came Thursday. In a statement about its “21st Century Clean Transportation System" plan, the Obama administration said it would pay for new infrastructure spending with a "new fee paid by oil companies." Here's an excerpt:

Istanbul

The American Founders designed a federal government of separated powers: They authorized Congress to pass the laws, the president to execute them, and the Supreme Court (and "such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish") to apply them in judicial proceedings. But…

On Thursday, New Jersey governor Chris Christie attacked Florida senator Marco Rubio from the left on the issue of abortion.

Portsmouth, N.H.

After last night's Democratic debate, Rachel Maddow, one of the debate moderators, hugged the candidates. First Bernie Sanders got pulled tight, then Hillary Clinton.

In few cases in its long history has the Supreme Court had occasion to interpret Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, which provides that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." This year it may have another. We'll know by the end of the Court's term in June,…

Perhaps The Scrapbook is getting old—or, more likely, regards the subject matter as uncomfortably close to home. But we were alternately amused and horrified last week by a front-page photo in the New York Post depicting Mattel's new Curvy Barbie doll: "Meet new 'Fat Barbie,' " read the headline.

Ted Cruz put on a show when he won the Iowa caucuses. The impression was that of a rookie football player dancing in the end zone after scoring a touchdown. In the NFL, teammates stop an exuberant player from celebrating too long and being penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct. The stage at his…

It was 11:30 p.m. on the night of the Iowa caucuses and Hillary Clinton had a decision to make. She was ahead of Bernie Sanders by less than 1 percent of the vote count and most of the precincts were in. But her lead was shrinking. If she waited much longer, her victory speech might turn into a…

The Hebrew Bible is shaped by two extended portraits, of Moses and David. Of the two stories, Moses’ is better known, but the narrative of David is more psychologically complex and dramatically vivid. As they divide the great mountains (Sinai and Zion) and two dominant terrains (desert and land)…

A memorable bit of health advice appeared in the February 3 New York Times: “Sexually active women who are not using birth control should refrain from alcohol to avoid the risk of giving birth to babies with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, even if those women are not yet known to be pregnant, the…

Ames, Iowa

Conjure up the private detective. For those familiar with the novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as well as the noir films of the 1940s and ’50s, this is easy magic. Tucked underneath a fedora, the archetypal P. I. chain-smokes cigarettes, goes nowhere without his trenchcoat, and…

George Washington firmly believed that the “hand of Providence" was "conspicuous" in the miracle of American independence—secured by a ragged army, more than once on the brink of annihilation, against the greatest military power on earth. Certainly, astonishing fortune seemed to attend the…

It’s been one scary horror movie. But now, at last, the happy ending. The slasher is dead. The aliens have been defeated. The flesh-eating zombies have been disposed of once and for all. The vampires will never suck blood again. You exhale. You relax. You heave a sigh of relief.

There has been a pretty consistent pattern to the Hillary Clinton email scandal. Every time the former secretary of state insists that the truth is all out, and it’s no big deal, yet more damaging information emerges. Recently she and her surrogates have been dissembling so much they've barely had…

In The Courage to Act, former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke reveals, a little unexpectedly, that he can tell a taut tale well, and in a manner accessible to someone who wouldn’t know a CDO from an Alt-A mortgage. After a likable autobiographical beginning, the book is centered on the Fed's…

In his weekly newsletter “Kristol Clear," The Scrapbook's boss alerts readers to "a two-part essay by Harvey Mansfield in the fine magazine City Journal. Mansfield's topic is 'Our Parties,' with Part I on 'The Democrats: how progress became drift,' and Part II on 'The Republicans: party of virtue.'…

In the classical Greek scheme of things, hubris—overweening pride—was a lurking trap for headstrong humans, not least such extraordinary figures as King Oedipus. Along with nemesis, its personified enforcer, hubris was a chronic susceptibility of the human temperament woven into the cosmic order.

So now that the Democratic party is well and truly feeling the Bern, how should those of us who identify not as democratic socialists nor oligarchs nor oligarch-enablers feel about those lighter-shade-of-Mao “Bernie 2016" yard signs reddening up the landscape?

"In a speech, Barack Obama, our most erudite president since Lincoln, inveighed against .  .  .  " (Gene Weingarten, Washington Post, January 28, 2016).

For alumni of U.S. national-security departments and agencies, Hillary Clinton’s email saga is mind-numbing. The publicly available information makes clear she and her aides violated so many elementary security prohibitions that alumni are speechless. They wonder, had they done what she did, how…

He always seemed happy—at least to my 9-year-old self. At my Little League games, he had his photo taken with each team. At the grand opening of a bakery owned by my friend's mom, he showed up at the last minute to personally cut the ribbon. He'd tuck into plates of pasta on Federal Hill, the…

Des Moines, Iowa

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and authorized it to sue companies that commit “unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices." Two staff reports and internal CFPB documents just released by congressional Republicans have exposed the new agency's…

Donald Trump sits atop national polls for the Republican nomination, with supporters arguing he is precisely the person to fight special interests, return power to the people, and “make America great again." If he were alive today, James Madison would surely disagree. The writings of the nation's…

Another college president has caved. After months of protests at Ithaca College alleging campus leaders are indifferent to racism, President Tom Rochon announced in January he would be stepping down before the end of his contract.

A good-looking young senator, short on experience, is seeking the White House, after what critics say are too few years served in the job he is holding, too few accomplishments in it, and altogether too little of the experience, tempering, grooming, and seasoning they think that a president needs.…

The Scrapbook’s commute is probably no worse than that of many of our readers who live in urban areas, which is to say that it's almost never pleasant and is also highly unpredictable. President Obama's appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 4, for example, added a good 30 minutes…

London

For as long as I can remember, harbingers of doom, naysayers, outcasts at life’s rich feast, and garden-variety curmudgeons have been saying that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Or words to that effect. Politicians and religious leaders are particularly fond of this admonition.…

During Thursday night's Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton was asked about her email scandal, electability, and other related issues.

It's officially a hoarse race in the Democratic primary.

Hillary Clinton supporters attended the Democratic debate in full force.

During Thursday night's Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders called Hillary Clinton establishment, and Clinton railed against Sanders' attacks on her.

Hillary Clinton is admitting to supporters that her main Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, outraised her by $5 million last month.

"The odds of making it past the front door? I'd say it's 60-40," says Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas. "To actually get to the Iranian Interest Section? Low single digits." Pompeo is in the back of a black SUV cruising past the National Mall in Washington, on his way to the Pakistani Embassy. Since Iran…

Exeter, N.H.

Iowa's largest newspaper roasted the state's Democrats Thursday for how they handled this year's caucus.

Hillary Clinton wasn't advocating for the right for gay people to marry when it mattered. That's what the gay rights group, Log Cabin Republicans, is saying.

Carly Fiorina's presidential campaign is requesting people sign a petition to include her in the next Republican debate.

Marco Rubio is catching up to the field in the Republican primary race, with a new poll showing the Florida senator slipping past Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in a three-way contest.

Print newspapers remain highly influential in South Korea, none more so than the Chosun Ilbo, the country's leading daily. (To put its dominance in context, consider that the Chosun Ilbo has a print circulation of 1.8 million, while the U.S.'s top-selling newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, sells…

During an event in New Hampshire on Wednesday, a woman said she was concerned about the super PAC supporting Jeb Bush, Right to Rise. She asked Jeb, "I like what you're saying, I think you're a gentleman, but are you playing good-cop, bad-cop? Because you say you have no control over your Right to…

Fresh off a victory in the Iowa caucuses, a feisty Ted Cruz unloaded on his rival Donald Trump Wednesday afternoon, asking repeatedly who the New Hampshire frontrunner might call "stupid" next.

During Wednesday's CNN Town Hall, Anderson Cooper asked Hillary Clinton, "One of the things that Senator Sanders points to, and a lot of your critics point to, is you made three speeches for Goldman Sachs, you were paid $675,000 for three speeches. Was that an error in judgment?"

Hillary Clinton is a courageous hawk. And at Wednesday's CNN town hall the leading Democratic presidential candidate said she might in fact have to expand U.S. military involvement abroad.

Donald Trump's days are numbered.

President Obama took on the role of television critic in remarks today at the Islamic Society of Baltimore.

A growing number of major insurers are pushing their customers not to visit the doctor in person, but via phone. United Healthcare was among the first major insurers to make the switch, and most readers will remember their humorous ad announcing the new coverage, but others are joining.

With the Senate dedicating a fair amount of floor time to the Energy Policy Modernization Act, Republican senators are taking the opportunity to shine a light on bad practices in the energy economy through the amendment process.

It's dangerous to be an opposition leader in Russia. That's the sense many observers had after Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov posted a short video on his Instagram page that showed political opposition figures Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Kara-Murza in the crosshairs of a sniper's rifle. (The video…

Jeb Bush has been trying to jab Donald Trump for weeks; in debates, on the stump, in ads, and on billboards. If there's a kitchen sink somewhere, it probably has a "Jeb!" sticker on it. And he'd almost certainly fling it the Donald's way if he could.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Donald Trump's interesting Iowa theory, Rand Paul dropping out, and what to look for in New Hampshire.

So here we are at last. The voters have started to speak and what they've said so far is quite different from how the race had been portrayed in the media. Nate Silver estimates that through mid-December, Donald Trump dominated 54 percent of the media coverage of the Republican primary campaign.…

If Jeb Bush badly loses in New Hampshire to Marco Rubio, the former Floriday governor "is toast." At least, that's what one high level Bush supporter, Lindsey Graham, said today in New Hampshire.

In the aftermath of the 2012 election, conservatives/Republicans generally split into two camps about where the movement or party needed to head next. One camp thought the key was to do a better job of making the case for conservative principles and policies (and to do a better job of developing…

Hillary Clinton is doing all she can to try to win New Hampshire. Including sending 150 staffers to the first in the nation primary story.

Rush Limbaugh said on his show Tuesday that Sen. Marco Rubio is a genuine member of the conservative movement, and that he doesn't care for him being labeled an establishment candidate. (Fellow radio host Michael Savage isn't going to like this.)

Silver Airways, a Florida-based airline, is mocking Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio for their "honorable mentions" in Iowa.

Donald Trump went back to the well of his "self-funding" strategy Tuesday, lamenting that voters haven't given him kudos for one of his campaign's central boasts.

For nearly three decades, politicians, pollsters, and pundits have considered support for ethanol a litmus test for legitimacy in Iowa presidential politics. Former Vice President Al Gore, who won the Iowa Democratic caucuses in 2000, famously explained the strategizing over ethanol policies that…

Well, I don't know how you feel, but it seems fitting to me that the day after this year's Iowa caucuses is Groundhog Day (and not because of the animal's resemblance to the thing that sits on The Donald's head). Just like Phil Connors in the 1993 Bill Murray-Harold Ramis classic, we find ourselves…

Yesterday, I noted that the White House's recent comment that Hillary Clinton would not be indicted "based on what we know" raised some troubling questions. Specifically, are the Justice Department and FBI briefing the White House on the ongoing investigation? And given the consequences of the…

Why does Donald Trump's respectable finish in the Iowa caucuses look so much like a stinging defeat? After all, for a conventional candidate, Trump's performance could easily be spun as a victory. In profoundly hostile territory – Iowa's GOP voters are deeply religious, while Trump is … Trump – the…

Hillary Clinton says she won the Iowa caucus, though some are claiming the state too close to call. Nonetheless, Clinton is moving on to New Hampshire with a sharp message for her supporters: "dig deep and do more."

With Hillary Clinton's dissapointing evening in last night's caucuses, there's already speculation that Clinton's campaign manager, Robbie Mook, will be fired or demoted.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, Puerto Rico is in serious financial trouble. It has accumulated more than $70 billion of debt, driven by reckless spending and short-sighted borrowing, that has left the commonwealth's public corporations and utilities virtually insolvent. To make…

West Des Moines, Iowa

Winners and losers from Iowa, ranked:

By finishing third in last night’s Iowa caucuses, Marco Rubio joined Donald Trump and Ted Cruz as a candidate with a realistic chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination. Rubio pulled himself out of the pack of long-shot candidates and sure losers in the large GOP field – by itself,…

Florida governor Jeb Bush received 5,165 votes in Iowa. His vote total constitutes 2.8 percent of the Republican turnout, placing him in sixth place in the Iowa caucus.

If you watched Hillary Clinton's speech following Monday night's Iowa Caucuses, you might have noticed some oddities.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the results of tonight's Iowa caucuses.

On Monday night, after Senator Ted Cruz was declared the winner of the Iowa Caucus, Senator Ben Sasse tweeted this:

Donald Trump has owned the polls, scientific or otherwise: polls about debate performance, polls measuring support in primary states, even "entrance" polls of Iowa caucus goers before they cast a vote Monday night. But Trump fell short in the nation's first primary state, with Texas senator Ted…

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley has suspended his presidential campaign. David Hamrick, O'Malley's campaign manager, sent this memo to interested parties:

CEDAR RAPID, Iowa — Donald Trump told voters that he had no interest in tamping down expectations during his last event before the Iowa caucus, saying he planned to win the whole thing.

To my mind, Barack Obama has always been wildly over-rated as a speaker. He has a great voice--really Saruman-caliber pipes. But his delivery is erratic and his material is rarely anywhere near as good as people think in the moment. His 2004 Purple America convention speech, for instance, might be…

It seems that voters have been disenchanted ever since they had the opportunity to elect Barack Obama president. In 2008, the country was war-weary, terrified of its financial state, and eager to change its polarizing politics. In 2010, it was worried about its solvency, agitated by a law of…

Des Moines

This morning, in the boss's weekly newsletter (sign up here for free!) Bill previewed his latest conversation with political scientist Harvey Mansfield:

At this point, it's pretty clear that the scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton's emails isn't going away anytime soon. The Associated Press recently reported that 22 emails on her likely compromised private email system contained information at the highest levels of classification. At every turn, it…

Donald Trump "University" is still at the center of an ongoing legal battle.

Des Moines

It's a coin flip in the Iowa Democratic Caucus between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Not so much in New Hampshire.

Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is once again dipping her toe into the political waters, announcing a bid for Wyoming's sole seat in the House of Representatives.

Leading in to the Iowa caucuses, opponents of Donald Trump began to hit him for his support of eminent domain. Not just any kind of eminent domain (road, bridge, etc.) but for trying to take an old woman's house for a parking lot for his (now failed) casino.

For Hillary Clinton's "final push" on the campaign trail she was joined by former first daughter Chelsea Clinton. KCAU reports:

The Senate held a hearing last week on the addiction and overdose crisis caused by heroin, illicit trafficking of the extremely potent drug fentanyl, and prescription opiate diversion and misuse. The crisis was responsible for 29,467 American deaths in 2014 alone, and many more in 2015 for which…

Hillary Clinton revealed this morning on ABC News that she finds campaigning in Iowa "exhausting" and that "it takes a lot of concentration."

In a three-part series on the Trump phenomenon, Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics argues that Donald Trump is the avatar of working-class anxieties within the Republican party. As he sees it, Trump is potentially “a more credible Santorum/Huckabee candidate." That's why poll after poll shows, "he…