March 2016

On Thursday, The Weekly Standard's Michael Warren joined CNN to talk about Donald Trump.

On Thursday morning, CNN's Anderson Cooper and his mother Gloria Vanderbilt were on the Diane Rehm Show to discuss their new book The Rainbow Comes and Goes.

Hillary Clinton lost her cool in an exchange with a Greenpeace activist:

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on Donald Trump's abortion gaffe at a MSNBC townhall.

The Great Wall of China, often cited as the ultimate measure of border security, was not, in fact, all that effective. Just ask Kublai Khan and his Mongol hordes who rode south through the original Great Wall fortifications to establish the Yuan Dynasty in 1279.

A PAC supporting John Kasich, New Day For America, released what is arguably the most uncomfortable ad of the cycle. It would make Pinocchio blush.

First he came for the airtime, then he just came for the air. Donald Trump has taken all the oxygen from his Republican rivals and used it to saturate the media with his every word, exclamation, explanation and exhortation to help him make America great again.

Donald Trump has provoked yet another campaign outrage, telling MSNBC's Chris Matthews that if a woman has an abortion, "There has to be some form of punishment." Outraged were not only pro-choice activists. Outraged too were pro-lifers—for the pro-life movement has never sought punishment for…

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, who endorsed Ted Cruz for president on Tuesday, stars in a new Cruz TV ad released today:

This year, the tax plans offered by various Republican candidates were all over the map in terms of the proposals being made. And most tax plans failed to avoid certain pitfalls, such as finding ways to cut taxes without increasing the debt and ensuring that cuts weren't disproportionately skewed…

Pundits on both the left and the right accuse Donald Trump of being a demagogue. Whether or not one agrees with that particular diagnosis, it's gratifying to see a variety of voices worrying about the dangers of demagoguery. Self-government demands rationality, realism, and restraint--all virtues…

Oftentimes, in order for a ridiculous regulation to be rejected, it must be litigated in court, frequently with the legal help of Institute for Justice (IJ)—if it's even struck then. Sometimes, as Kentucky showed this week, the state legislature nixes the law before it goes to court.

Ted Cruz thinks that Donald Trump embodies "New York values." Hillary Clinton isn't so sure.

Donald Trump has a big lead in New York, according to a new poll. In fact, the leading Republican presidential candidate is 36 points ahead of his nearest competitor.

During a townhall event today with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Donald Trump said "there has to be some form of punishment" for women who obtain abortions. Trump quickly reversed himself after pro-life advocates pointed out that they have long opposed imposing criminal penalties on a woman who undergoes…

Could a crack in Donald Trump's airtight national media strategy be emerging? There are reasons to believe the continuing story of Michelle Fields, the Breitbart News reporter who was forcibly grabbed by Trump's campaign manager earlier this month, is doing harm to one of the GOP frontrunner's best…

President Obama brought former inmates to lunch at Busboys and Poets, a hipster haven in Washington, D.C. Valerie Jarrett noted the lunch on Twitter:

Earlier Wednesday, President Obama commuted sentences for 61 drug offenders.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the upcoming Wisconsin primary election.

Just a few months ago, few would have predicted that John Kasich would be one of the last three candidates standing in the GOP presidential primary. Now, a lot of GOP voters are looking at Kasich with fresh eyes and considering voting for him.

A new Marquette Law School poll shows Ted Cruz jumping out to a 10-point lead over Donald Trump—40 percent to 30 percent—with John Kasich far behind in third place at 21 percent.

Just hours before President Xi Jinping's arrival in Prague on Monday for the first state visit by China's head of state to the Czech Republic, his host, President Miloš Zeman, gave a curious interview to Beijing's state broadcaster, CCTV. He called the impending visit "a restart" for Czech-Chinese…

Donald Trump said Wednesday morning that his legal appointments to the Justice Department and the Supreme Court "would look very seriously" at Hillary Clinton's email scandal.

Donald Trump has undeniably brought the issue of trade with China to the national stage. With Trump's good odds at becoming the GOP nominee, down-ballot candidates in the House and the Senate are indeed having to grapple with a changed landscape.

There's good news for environmentalism coming out of St. Louis, near the radioactive West Lake Landfill: The community is safe, the EPA has a clean-up plan, and the company that owns the landfill is even paying for it. No one could stop this kind of progress!

In this political season, the results of polling have proven as problematic as they have consequential. Questions of validity increasingly plague polls at the very moment that the body politic most bends to their will (or to that of the media outlets reporting on them).

During Tuesday's CNN town hall, Donald Trump repeated his assertion that he might support allowing Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear weapons.

Scott Brown’s 2010 election to the U.S. Senate was a major moment for opponents of what was to become President Barack Obama's health care law. Brown ran as a Republican in Massachusetts in a special election to replace the late liberal lion Ted Kennedy, and his improbable victory there came in no…

On Tuesday during CNN's town hall, Donald Trump was asked what he thinks are the top three functions of government.

Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that bruises Michelle Fields displayed on her arm after an encounter with his campaign manager could have existed prior to the incident.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Jonathan V. Last on the arrest of Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

President Obama delivered a lecture at a Syracuse University event Monday night, in which he instructed the class of assembled press to do their job. It's not just the Senate Judiciary Committee that has been on the receiving end of that particular harangue, it seems.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on why Gov. Scott Walker's Cruz endorsement matters.

Among the many intriguing revelations in Jeffrey Goldberg's recent interview with President Obama, one of the most surprising was that (privately, to be sure) the president "has argued that there will be no comprehensive solution to Islamist terrorism until Islam reconciles itself to modernity and…

On Tuesday, Geneva Ridgefield, mother of Sandra Bland, discussed how people she meets complain that Hillary Clinton has lied. Ridgefield defended Clinton, and later joked about Bill Clinton, "If I was to be held accountable for everything my man did, whoa! We'd have a problem!"

Over at Steve Sailer’s blog, one of his commenters has found an interesting post from economist Brad DeLong back in 2003. For those of you who don't remember the early '00s, DeLong was a deputy assistant secretary at Treasury under Bill Clinton who became one of the stars of the lefty blogosphere,…

Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president in January, but in a clear sign that Trump isn't unifying the GOP, Sarah Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC, sent out a fundraising email today that doesn't mention Trump. Instead, the fundraising plea asks for money to help "elect new…

Tuesday morning, Donald Trump's campaign manager was arrested for grabbing a reporter earlier this month.

On Tuesday, reports surfaced that Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was arrested for grabbing Michelle Fields.

Scott Walker is endorsing Ted Cruz for president of the United States.

On Monday, Newt Gingrich called Donald Trump's notorious retweet insulting Heidi Cruz's appearance "utterly stupid," and talked about how "one of the dumbest weeks in presidential politics that I can remember" distracts people from Hillary Clinton's scandals.

Will Tim Tebow be the next celebrity to run for office?

President Obama will today introduce new executive actions. This time the target opioid abuse and the heroin epidemic.

At a speech today in Madison, Wisconsin on the Supreme Court, the top Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, got hit with another coughing fit:

The bottom line from a reported minimum wage agreement in California? No one knows how it'll be affected.

Three years ago, on the eve of Obamacare’s implementation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that President Obama's centerpiece legislation would result in an average of 201 million people having private health insurance in any given month of 2016. Now that 2016 is here, the CBO says…

Martha Minow and Deanell Tacha, the deans of Harvard Law School and Pepperdine School of Law, respectively, are frustrated at the Senate's refusal to consider Merrick Garland, President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court. They claim that "two-thirds of Americans want the senators to do their…

Team Hillary is very unhappy their candidate has to compete in an actual competitive Democratic primary.

Multiple outlets are reporting that a young woman intercepted in Cameroon on Friday claims to be one of the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram from Chibok, Nigeria, in April 2014. Some reports say the girl—one of two arrested in northern Cameroon on Friday 25 March—turned herself in…

The Washington, D.C. streetcar – a 2.2.-mile, slower-than-walking form of "transportation" that took nearly a decade and $200 million to complete – is not often heralded as an urban planning success story. Even the partisans of new urbanism – the types who loathe cars and venerate all things rail -…

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump stumbled to defend his recent attacks on his top rival's wife during an interview on a Wisconsin radio station Monday. Trump joined WTMJ's Charlie Sykes, a prominent conservative talk-radio host in Milwaukee and a supporter of Ted Cruz, to discuss…

The boss joined guest host Jon Karl on ABC's This Week to discuss the 2016 election. The Powerhouse Roundtable discussed both frontrunner Donald Trump and insurgent underdog Bernie Sanders after each spoke on the program.

The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol, featuring professor Stephen Rosen:

Failed presidential candidate John Kerry is an embarrassed by the presidential campaign. In remarks to CBS's John Dickerson, the current secertary of state said that "every leader" he talks to "cannot believe" what is "happening in America."

Hillary Clinton faces "outright sexism" and "sexist condescension" on her way to becoming president of the United States. That claim is being made by singer Barbra Streisand, a longtime backer of the Clinton family, in an article for the Huffington Post.

After the Dark Week

As a schoolboy, I remember leafing through the pictures of a history text and being captivated by an engraving of General Edward Braddock and his army marching in file along a newly cut path through the American wilderness. Behind every tree and rock crouched Indians and French troops waiting to…

A new LA Times poll released on Sunday finds that the GOP presidential race in California is a dead heat among likely voters: Donald Trump leads Ted Cruz by just one point—36 percent to 35 percent—with John Kasich in third place at 14 percent. The California primary is more than two months away,…

Are you a White Nationalist and a Donald Trump fan? Are people mean to you? There's a hotline for that, now. The Daily Beast reports:

CNN showed live video of an anti-immigrant protest at the site of a memorial for the terror attack last week in Brussels. Watch here:

With Brussels under attack by Islamic terrorists, it takes a truly self-regarding president to believe that he, not the Islamic terrorists, was orchestrating a world-historic event. If you missed the news while following the doings of terrorists in Belgium or our presidential wannabees scrambling…

Take us down to the supergroup city.

Sen. Tom Cotton said Friday morning that Donald Trump would be "a more serious leader" as president than Hillary Clinton, arguing the same is true of any Republican currently running for the party's nomination.

Radovan Karadzic has been convicted and sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment for genocide and other crimes, by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He was the political leader of radical nationalist Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1992-95 war that…

Atlanta

Who started it? The question recalls juvenile disputes between siblings or classmates, but at the moment it's the issue at the center of the increasingly puerile Republican presidential primary. Did Donald Trump or Ted Cruz start the fight over each other's wives? One thing is for sure: Cruz has…

Miami

The Washinton Post reports that Chelsea Clinton thinks Democrats won't take back the House of Representatives in 2016.

The latest Washington Free Beacon Wisconsin poll finds Ted Cruz with a slight lead over Donald Trump. Lachlan Markay reports:

The top Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, wants to dig into the UFO files. Clinton made the revelation in an interview last night with Jimmy Kimmel.

Several Fox News employees have linked Ted Cruz to an anti-Donald Trump ad featuring the billionaire businessman's third wife, Melania, but it was produced by a political action committee that is in no way affiliated with the Texas senator's campaign.

On Thursday, Fox News's Charles Payne asked Ben Carson about the ongoing feud between Donald Trump, who Carson has endorsed, and Ted Cruz, over Cruz's wife.

A video shows Chelsea Clinton blasting the "crushing costs" of President Barack Obama's signature legislation. In the video, Chelsea Clinton tells a crowd that her mother, Hillary Clinton, is open to using executive action to reduce "crushing costs" of Obamacare.

John Kasich is now 0-for-30 in races outside of his home state of Ohio, and he has managed to finish second in just four of those states. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, has eight wins and thirteen runner-up finishes, not counting the win in his home state of Texas. One would think there would no longer be…

Cuban dictator Raul Castro's alternately affable and defiant denial of human rights violations at his brief "press conference" with President Obama in Havana reminded me of a similar performance by his brother here in the U.S.—probably the only other time a Castro has submitted to even cursory…

On Thursday, Donald Trump tweeted, "Hillary Clinton has been working on solving the terrorism problem for years. TIME FOR A CHANGE, I WILL SOLVE - AND FAST!"

Donald Trump dug in with his skepticism of NATO on Thursday, calling the alliance and its mission out-of-date.

Donald Trump plans to visit Speaker Paul Ryan's home town of Janesville, WI, for a town hall event next week.

Editor William Kristol joined Ben Domenech for the Federalist Radio Hour podcast to discuss efforts to run an independent candidate as a third party alternative to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

President Obama hit the dance floor last night in Argentina. Watch:

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Brookings scholar William Galston observes that there is still a path for a third-party conservative challenger to Donald Trump, should he win the GOP nomination. Getting on most state ballots, writes Galston, is not the hardest part:

The poll, conducted March 20 to 22 by Emerson College, indicates that Kasich's presence in the race is taking more votes from Cruz than from Trump. Kasich's supporters view Cruz as more favorable than Trump by an 9-point margin—36 percent to 27 percent.

A new national poll from Quinnipiac asked registered voters to list a word that "best describes" how they feel about either of the presidential front-runners as commander in chief. The responses were uninspiring, particularly for the Republican favorite.

London

In 2014, a former senior interrogator with the CIA's High Value Detainee interrogation program drafted an article on "the ticking time bomb scenario" and interrogating terrorists. The article was approved by the CIA's Publication Review Board but given the time that lapsed in getting approval, it…

Many Republicans likely went to bed last night with Donald Trump dominating in Arizona, on his way to 58 electoral votes there. But on the night, Trump once again failed to get 50 percent of the vote. In fact, based on the 99 percent of precincts that have ‎reported (as of 3:30 PM EST) in Arizona…

House speaker Paul Ryan’s address Wednesday was billed as a disquisition on the "state of American politics." But it was less an assessment of our politics than Ryan's own optimistic prescription for improving it. With references to his mentor Jack Kemp and a time when members of Congress "took our…

At a press conference today in Argentina, President Obama says that people in Boston "taught America a lesson" after the marathon bombing. He said "they grieved," "we apprehended those who had carried this out, but a few days later folks were out shopping."

President Obama has a new way to defeat the Islamic State: by telling the terror organization they are weak. Obama revealed his strategy at a press conference today in Argentina.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Senior Fellow and frequent contributor Thomas Joscelyn on what we know about the Brussels terror attacks.

President Obama said that ISIS is not "an existential threat to us" in a news conference today in Argentina:

Today, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan delivered an address on Capitol Hill to a bipartisan group of congressional interns. In the speech, Ryan calls on Americans not to become disheartened by the state of American politics and angry rhetoric. And he urges his fellow politicians not to give in to…

Donald Trump's victory Tuesday in Arizona's Republican primary delivered to him all 58 of the state's delegates, but even as his win there pulls him closer to the nomination, there are signs the GOP frontrunner remains weak. Meanwhile Trump's rival Ted Cruz pulled nearly 70 percent of the vote to…

One of the first places I visited on a government-sanctioned "educational" tour to Cuba several years back was the Plaza de la Revolucion, a hideous expanse of concrete at the center of Havana that makes, say, Tiananmen Square look positively charming. It was there that President Obama was featured…

Donald Trump is questioning Hillary Clinton's physical fortitude. Trump was asked about facing-off against Hillary Clinton, when he brought up the former secretary of state's "strength" and "stamina."

Jeb Bush is endorsing Texas senator Ted Cruz for president of the United States.

Fox News reports:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took to Twitter Tuesday night to threaten to "spill the beans" on the wife of his rival, Ted Cruz. Trump criticized Cruz as "Lyin' Ted" and criticized the Texas senator for supposedly using a magazine photo shoot of Trump's wife in an ad against the…

Hollywood is nominating former Gov. Sarah Palin for a seat on the courtroom TV bench.

In one of Donald Trump's many gristly interview responses to the Washington Post editorial board, he punted the nuclear football into outer space. Post CEO Fred Ryan asked the Republican presidential front-runner if he would "use a battlefield nuclear weapon to take out ISIS" — a relevant question,…

President Obama reacted to today's terror attack in Brussels in an ESPN interview. The sitdown was at the Rays-Cuba game today in Havana.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with AEI resident scholar Gary Schmitt on today's terror attacks in Brussels.

Toronto Councilman Rob Ford has died at age 46, following a battle with cancer.

The Amaq News Agency, a propaganda arm of the Islamic State (or ISIS), has claimed responsibility for today's attacks in Brussels. The claim is hardly surprising: The Islamic State has had Belgium in its crosshairs since at least 2014.

On NBC's Today Show, Hillary Clinton phoned in to chat with Savannah Guthrie as cries of the wounded and dying in Brussels set the scene in the background.

On Monday, former President Bill Clinton blamed disaster in Europe on migrants. He also seemed to suggest the migrants are causing Europeans to fear diversity.

This morning on CBS This Morning, Hillary Clinton phoned in to discuss the terror attacks in Brussels and was cut off mid-thought.

During President Obama's speech in Cuba on Tuesday, he discussed differences between Cuba and America.

President Obama is on his historic trip to Cuba right now, though it’s proving historic in ways that Obama didn't intend. Right before the president arrived, Cuban authorities took the liberty of arresting dozens of human rights protesters right before he arrived. Otherwise, being forced to…

Two terrorist attacks in Brussels this morning have left at least 27 dead, the Wall Street Journal reports.

TWS senior writer Mark Hemingway recently delivered a lecture entitled "Silence Is Death: The Demise of Free Speech" at Hillsdale College.

Donald Trump's campaign didn't give the public much to chew on when it was announced he would host a meeting of Republican lawmakers and notables in the nation's capital. But one participant did say it ended up being a "pretty good" lunch.

It’s hard to decide which part of Donald Trump's Monday afternoon press conference in Washington was the most bizarre. There was the spectacle of holding the event in Trump's newest hotel, being constructed at a D.C. landmark, the Old Post Office Building. The sound system helped Trump's voice echo…

At an event today in Spokane, Washington, Bill Clinton called for putting "the awful legacy of the last 8 years behind us and the 7 years before that where we were practicing trickle down economics."

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on what a Trump nomination would hold for the GOP.

Today at the joint press conference between President Barack Obama and Cuban president Raul Castro, the pair took questions from the press.

President Obama said that he "personally would not disagree" with some of Cuban President Raul Castro's criticisms of America:

President Obama laid out a few areas the U.S. will work with Cuba, including health initiatives, climate change, and law enforcement.

Utah governor Gary Herbert endorsed Ted Cruz for president, according to a report from Fox 13 in Salt Lake City. "Herbert confirmed his endorsement for Cruz at a signing for H.B. 27 – a bill that adds an "In God We Trust" license plate as one of the standard options available to Utah residents,"…

Monday morning, Comfortably Smug tweeted this picture of President Obama standing in front of a mural of Che Guevara during his visit to Cuba.

Sen. Ted Cruz said Sunday that President Obama's trip to Cuba indicates that the world has abandoned political prisoners held under the country's communist regime.

Donald Trump and his supporters contend that the GOP establishment is a bunch of gutless, cowardly weasels who won’t fight for what they believe in. And the establishment is on the verge of proving them right—by supporting Donald Trump.

President Obama is very proud of himself for his "historic" visit to Cuba. At least, that's the message he had last night for staff of the U.S. embassy at the Melia Habana Hotel in Havana, Cuba.

The Man You Can't Escape

Over the past few months, someone has been following Ted Cruz around with a "Ted Cruz likes Nickelback" sign. The culprit is now revealed:

RNC chairman Reince Priebus joined George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week to discuss violence at Donald Trump's rallies and this summer's Republican National Convention.

The boss joined The Lead with Jake Tapper Friday to discuss the Republican primary and the efforts to stop Donald Trump.

Those of us who follow economic news as well as politics were treated to a view of two sides of this country. Turn on a news channel and there is Donald Trump, burly, blonde, braggadocious, belligerent, rude to hostile questioners, promising things he cannot deliver, but doing so in clear, easily…

Bernie Sanders will not join the rest of the presidential candidates and address AIPAC at next week's policy conference in Washington, D.C.

Mitt Romney is not endorsing Ted Cruz, but he will vote for him.

The Hillary Clinton campaign has received donations from a million people. Teddy Goff, who does digital strategy for the campaign, made the announcement today on Twitter.

Paul Ryan is the brains of the GOP. With each passing primary victory, Donald Trump is becoming its voice, if not its soul. Their contrast inevitabily will produce a clash. And although the House speaker said Thursday he'd come to terms with the presidential frontrunner, he also reaffirmed his…

Charles Krauthammer, Chris Wallace, and others have recently speculated that part of John Kasich’s purpose in staying in the Republican presidential race—thereby preventing Ted Cruz from having a one-on-one shot at Donald Trump—is the Ohioan's desire to be Trump's running mate. Whether that is…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on the state of the GOP race and this summer's RNC Convention in Cleveland.

The FOX Business show Stossel has turned the classic "man on the street" interview into "loser on the street."

Dr. Sam Clovis, a failed politician turned "top aide" to GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, threatened today on CNN to leave the Republican party should Donald Trump lose a contested convention.

The chorus of politicians and critics calling Donald Trump a con artist grows louder every day. During my seven years as an enforcement attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission, I got a close-up view of many con artists and their scams. Watching Mr. Trump gives me an acute feeling of déjà…

Discussing the "sentencing reform" bill now before the Senate—the effect of which would be to provide early release for thousands of federal felons—George Will argues that it will not be enough. That's because the issue is "complex."

Jimmy Kimmel used that fact to have some fun with people on his "Lie Witness News" segment.

There was apparently another ISIS-inspired attack in America. This time it was stabbings on a college campus.

John Kasich, typically circumspect in his willingness to engage Donald Trump directly, attacked the GOP presidential frontrunner Thursday for his "implicit acceptance of violence."

"Oh wow," a voice up ahead on the trail called, "look at that. A perfect view of the Altar of Sacrifice."

Was there ever a successful Marxist author whose parents weren’t affluent? From Bertolt Brecht to Frantz Fanon to Che Guevara, there's a pattern: privileged youth, largely unmerited prominence, then increasing indifference from readers and audiences after death. As the falseness of the writing…

Here’s the new line from Donald Trump's cheerleaders in the conservative media: A refusal to support Trump is a de facto endorsement of Hillary Clinton. It's an argument they're making out of necessity, not conviction, trying to use peer pressure to achieve the unanimity their previous exhortations…

If you are an American, raised on a diet of Western rationalism, it is difficult to understand the idea of holy war. We can look back hundreds of years to the Wars of Religion, where Christians rapaciously killed each other over matters of faith. We can look at Northern Ireland’s troubles and…

As Donald Trump racked up victory after victory on (the first) Super Tuesday, it wasn’t just within the campaigns of his Republican opponents that you could find desolation and despair. In the four hours after results started coming in at 8 p.m., web searches across the country on variations of…

With progressive education’s long march to undo America's consensus on Judeo-Christian values nearly complete, kids trapped in public schools are routinely exposed to only two forms of moral exhortation: being scolded over global warming and subjected to a torrent of anti-bullying messages. Concern…

Los Angeles

There’s plenty of blame to go around for the creation of Trumpism. The p.c. insanity on college campuses. Globalization and the hollowing out of the working class. ISIS in Paris and San Bernardino. The broadcast media that donated $1.898 billion in free media to the cause. Let's stipulate all of…

John Feehery is a Washington lobbyist and former spokesman for the disgraced ex-speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. Last week, Feehery explained to the Atlantic’s Molly Ball why he's reconciled to accepting Donald Trump as the nominee of his party:

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of what started as a peaceful uprising in Syria. A bunch of teenagers scrawled on a wall in their hometown of Deraa the slogan of the Arab spring: “The people," they wrote, "want to topple the regime."

It was my birthday, and I didn't have a drink to celebrate. A few nights later I made a dinner of pork tenderloin with mushrooms and olives. The only thing missing was a glass of red wine, yet I stuck with water.

Donald Trump was wise to decline to join a 13th and final Republican presidential debate. He has little new to say and not much that’s compelling or interesting. He began the 11th debate by calling Mitt Romney "a failed candidate" and "an embarrassment to everybody." And in his next-to-last…

His politics usually ranged from the reprehensible to the inane, and almost always out on the far fringes of the left. His mind was an endlessly changeable place—and whatever the certainty and panache with which he announced a new intellectual position, he would dismiss it a few years later as…

‘It is well that war is so terrible," Robert E. Lee once said, "or we should grow too fond of it." The quote makes almost no sense to us today, after a century of battlefield horrors and the awareness of the psychic and spiritual costs of war on those who fight it. But for soldiers in the premodern…

Last week President Barack Obama nominated federal appellate judge Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s untimely death in February. Under the appointments clause of the Constitution, Garland won't take a seat on the Supreme Court unless the Senate approves his…

In what has become a spring tradition, Obamacare returns to the Supreme Court this month, the fourth time in five years. Fortunately for the religious nonprofits challenging the law’s contraceptive mandate—including the Little Sisters of the Poor, a monastic order that cares for impoverished…

Not many people had heard of Frauke Petry, a pretty and very sassy 40-year-old chemist, until she started talking about how a country without borders is not a country at all and railing against the political establishment. It is natural for Americans to think of Petry as a kind of German version of…

Anticipating edicts from trans-friendly bureaucrats, some states are trying to deal preemptively with the understandable discomfort felt by young women when their public school rest-rooms are opened to young men who “identify" as women. Tennessee legislators are working up a law that would require…

In November 1993 an unlikely book appeared at the top of the bestseller lists. William J. Bennett’s The Book of Virtues was a tome: 832 pages of moral instruction. People ate it up. Newsweek called it “just what this country needs,” and Time said it “ought to be distributed, like an owner’s manual,…

In July, Vermont will become the first state to require that food made with GMOs (genetically modified organisms) be labeled. This presents an interesting challenge for food companies, who will either have to segregate and label products headed toward the Green Mountain State, label everything they…

If you’ve ever wanted to know why Albuquerque topless pole dancers get significantly higher tips on days when they are more fertile—and who doesn't?—this book is for you. Like many other aspects of human behavior, it has to do with the fact that men and women both try to maximize the success of…

If you had to come up with a description for the response of institutional Republicans to Donald Trump, it would be this: Too late.

At the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone offers an excellent analysis of why John Kasich’s continued presence in the Republican presidential race enables Donald Trump, even as many Republicans and Republican-leaning pundits try to avoid facing up to this reality. In a piece entitled, "Only Ted…

A production of George Orwell's 1984 comes with its own set of questions. How do you perform a very political story without making a political play? Or rather, how does a production handle Orwell's critiques of the totalitarian state without hammering (and sickling?) the audience over the head with…

Lindsey Graham might never be caught hugging Ted Cruz, but he's hugged the cactus in choosing to back his fellow lawmaker's presidential bid.

On Capitol Hill, it's appropriations season, and members are sending "Dear Colleague" letters left and right, seeking their colleagues' support for programmatic funding requests.

A poll of Arizona Republicans conducted last week but released today shows Donald Trump leading Ted Cruz 31 percent to 19 percent, with John Kasich and Marco Rubio tied at 10 percent.

Here's video of President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, appearing to mock Donald Trump at a moot court competition at Yale University in the fall of 2012:

The wide swath of Washington and New York Republicans and Republican-leaning pundits who really don’t want a Ted Cruz or Donald Trump presidency are moving deeper into denial. Their latest fantasy is that John Kasich can still become the GOP nominee. Never mind that Kasich has already been…

Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged Thursday morning that ISIS has committed genocide against minority populations, including Christians, though his remarks have no legal consequence and did not indicate a shift in U.S. policy toward the terror group.

Plagiarize Ben Carson, and he doesn't mind. Say he has "pathological disease" — compare his mind to that of a child molester — and he's unbothered. Wrong him, and he shall not revenge.

While for most people, thoughts of Ireland are limited to wearing green and drinking too much beer on St. Patrick's Day, for those of us who think about tax policy, the country and its successes are worth pondering more than once a year.

Iran and Russia are right. Or, at least, they are better interpreters of international law than the Harvard Law Review editor currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. After Iran test-fired multiple ballistic missiles last week, the Obama administration has been at pains to find a legal basis…

While the so-called "War On Women" has been hashtagged, memed, and beaten to death, the battle for equality rages on—apparently with high-pitched fervor.

Donald Trump hires the best people. The greatest. It's a promise he's made voters in 29 states, most of which have voted for him.

With the March 15 slate of Republican primaries in the books, 29 of the 50 states have now voted. Donald Trump, the leader, not only hasn't won half of the votes to date (and hasn't even won half of the votes in a single state), but he hasn't even won three-eighths of them. Rather, Trump has won 37…

They're not saying "Gooooose"—they're booing. Yes, baseball fans are booing Hall of Fame reliever Rich "Goose" Gossage for his crazy broadside on sports talk radio last week against the game he loves. He ripped ballplayers and management in what can only be considered a rearguard action in…

President Obama evidently thinks he has a nominee who is confirmable by a Republican Senate that soon after Antonin Scalia's death made clear its intention to block anyone the president might nominate and thus let the voters decide in November who instead should select Scalia's replacement.

On Wednesday morning, President Obama announced his nomination of Merrick B. Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with frequent contributor Adam J. White on President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

With Donald Trump's defeat in Ohio on March 15, Trump's opponents now have a plausible path to holding him to fewer than 1,100 delegates in the GOP presidential race—well short of the majority (1,237 delegates) required by the rules to win the Republican nomination.

In descending order of the magnitude of the theft:

Ted Cruz said that he won't humble himself before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to smooth over the rough relationship he has developed with colleagues.

Donald Trump has confirmed speculation that he will not attend Monday's Republican debate, adding that the party has held plenty such forums, anyway.

The Associated Press's story on the 15-year prison sentence that the North Korean government has handed down to American college student Otto Warmbier contains a strange assertion.

Donald Trump is warning that there will be "riots" if the Republican nomination for president is taken from him.

A Supreme Court nominee is coming today from President Obama. The White House announced:

We shouldn’t be surprised the Republican presidential race has come down to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. This is a party in which half or more of its voters feel they've been betrayed by their leaders. Who else would they favor except the two candidates most at odds with the GOP brass?

With Marco Rubio dropping out tonight, you’re going to hear a lot of theorizing about why he lost. It was the Gang of Eight. It was Trump. It was the anger. It was the out-of-touch elites. None of this is correct.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on tonight's Super Tuesday election.

A study shows that, during the presidential campaign, Donald Trump has earned $1.90 billion of free media coverage about him. Despite that, he's been incredibly hostile to the press. Recently, his campaign manager was accused of assaulting Michelle Fields, who worked for an outlet favorable to…

Marco Rubio ended his campaign for president after election results showed him a distant second in his home state of Florida Tuesday, slipping the announcement into a concession speech that reflected on his White House bid, assessed the tone of American politics, and advocated a robust conservatism.

Fox News reports:

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton was asked whether or not NAFTA was a mistake.

In a recent Washington Post advice column, a mother complains about her almost 6-year-old son's penchant for bad language. We're not just talking about negative words like "stupid," but also the f-bomb. He has been hurling insults at his younger brother, telling him to "shut up." The 3-year-old…

On Tuesday, the City of Los Angeles announced the formation of a "Transgender Advisory Council," a board selected to "advise City leaders on issues facing the trans community."

It's understandably difficult to champion a man who once likened you to a pathological child molester. This is the plight of the polite and mild-mannered Ben Carson, who has appeared downright tepid about his endorsement of Donald Trump.

It wasn’t the easiest of Saturdays to get out the vote—from road closures for a city-wide marathon to afternoon drizzle. (Any Washingtonian knows that either of those factors is enough to send us into gridlock.) But D.C. Republicans turned up and patiently waited in a line that wrapped around three…

In the midst of a raging heroin epidemic, Americans just got more bad news: Colombian cocaine production jumped from 250 metric tons (MT) in 2014 to 420 MT in 2015—a 68 percent increase in one year for the nation supplying 95 percent of the cocaine in the United States.

No one can really question the net worth of Donald Trump's free media coverage.

There are two candidates who have repeatedly defied expectations over this campaign season. And while less attention has been paid to Bernie Sanders than to Donald Trump, many people believe that Sanders, like Trump, has energized an authentic political movement that could reshape American politics.

Sean Trende has an important piece on delegate pluralities this morning. Here's a flavor of it:

The day before Tuesday's Ohio primary, Donald Trump tweeted a photo that implied an endorsement of a Buckeye State sports legend. Former Cincinnati Red and disgraced gambler Pete Rose had seemingly signed a baseball with a message encouraging Trump in his presidential bid. Here's Trump's tweet:

The Republican National Committee has filed four more lawsuits as it tries to get access to more Hillary Clinton-related records.

Hillary Clinton is taking on Donald Trump in her latest fundraising pitch. But she's asking supporters for a dollar to help her wage the war.

During MSNBC's town hall with Hillary Clinton on Monday, Clinton discussed foreign policy in Libya.

Chris Christie's unlikely endorsement of Donald Trump and his solemn look on the trail with Trump led some to ask in jest whether he's been held hostage by Trump. Christie said, "I want everyone to know for those who were concerned: I wasn’t being held hostage."

A new advertisement from the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC shows women reading some of the New York businessman's infamous quotations about females.

Marco Rubio warned Monday that there will be a "reckoning" in the conservative movement for those backing Donald Trump.

Florida attorney general Pam Bondi has endorsed Donald Trump the day before the Sunshine State's Republican presidential primary. The Tampa Bay Times reports Bondi endorsed Trump at a rally Monday and called him "the most popular person in Florida, by far."

Asian-Americans have recently surpassed Hispanics as the fastest growing ethnic voting bloc in the United States, with their voting numbers expected to double by 2040. Admiring thrift, hating waste, valuing education, upholding traditional family values, and with a disproportionate number of small…

It's been the night of the living debt in Washington for decades now. Government programs that Congress hasn't expressly approved to receive money keep operating on the taxpayer's dime, and the cost is no pocket change. These "unauthorized" programs, zombies of the federal budget, total more than…

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is accusing Donald Trump of "literally inciting violence among his supporters." Sanders made the comment in a town hall with NBC's Chuck Todd.

Following controversy about Donald Trump supporters' violence towards Trump protesters, The Pantagraph—a local Illinois publication—reports that "[p]eople going to the Donald Trump rally on Sunday drove over graves."

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the need to continue to fight Trump.

CNN reports that Bernie Sanders thanks Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for not endorsing him.

Writing over at the Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti examines the claim that, come November, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump would be "the same."

The latest Conversations With Bill Kristol features author and professor Robert D. Putnam:

Not that it ever left—but it sure seemed that way, what with Burger King having introduced more than 50 different menu items in a single year (remember Satisfries?). But it finally dawned on Restaurant Brands International Inc. that its fast-food burger chain was better off selling classic…

To Los Angeles and Back

Hillary Clinton told a CNN town hall in Ohio that "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."

During CNN's Democratic town hall on Sunday evening, a woman confronted Hillary Clinton about how Obamacare has impacted her.

At a Democratic town hall Sunday in Ohio, Hillary Clinton said that foreign leaders are asking to endorse her in order to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.

During a rally in Ohio on Sunday, a man asked Donald Trump about his comments about Senator John McCain's time as a POW.

The March 15 Republican primaries will be the most important contests to date in determining who the GOP presidential nominee will be. Donald Trump would be in a strong position if he sweeps Ohio, Florida, Illinois, and Missouri on Tuesday. But mixed results for Trump could make it difficult for…

On ABC's This Week, the boss discussed the prospect of defeating Donald Trump.

Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to engage in violence against peaceful protesters at his rallies by saying on Sunday that he is considering paying the legal fees of a North Carolina man who punched a protester in the face. Time reports:

Last night's events in Chicago brought to mind the great 1838 address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, by the 29-year-old Abraham Lincoln, on "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions." Here are a few excerpts. Read the whole thing:

Florida senator Marco Rubio told reporters Saturday he's not sure if he could support Donald Trump if the New York businessman were the Republican nominee for president.

Hillary Clinton responded to the protests and violence at the Donald Trump rally last night by releasing this statement:

Into the home stretch. Unless we aren't. The Republican nomination fight could be all but over on Tuesday. Or if not then on April 19, when New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and other voters with 1,299 delegates decide whether they want Donald Trump to make a run at gilding the White House while…

A sign of the times: a woman at Nancy Reagan's funeral stopped in front of her casket for a picture. The scene was captured today on Fox News:

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on what you need to know about the Michelle Fields-Breitbart-Trump controversy.

Last night's subdued Republican presidential primary debate has twice as many viewers as the Democratic presidential primary debate the night before.

A new Kansas City Star poll shows Donald Trump leading Ted Cruz 36 percent to 29 percent in Missouri's Republican presidential primary. Marco Rubio and John Kasich are far behind in the single digits at 9 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

Goose Gossage is still a flamethrower. Even at age 64, many years removed from the mound, the former Yankees closer is throwing heat at hitters, just with his mouth instead of his arm. And true to a hurler's style, he's prone to be erratic.

Asked to explain his past comments on the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, Donald Trump described the protesters using similar language contained in the Chinese government's account.

If Donald Trump has a personal credo, it might be something like what he said Friday morning in Palm Beach: "When somebody hits, I have to hit back."

Friday morning, Ben Carson endorsed Donald Trump. During the press conference, a reporter asked, when Carson "says there are two Donald Trumps, do you agree with that characterization and could you amplify on it?"

As debate continues about the president's eventual nomination to the Supreme Court — or, more specifically, as the President's proponents inside and outside the Senate grind their teeth over the fact that the Constitution doesn't actually require the Senate to spring into action when the President…

Bernie Sanders will be interviewed by Jesse Jackson. Jonathan Allen reports for Sidewire's Stitch:

Following Thursday night's debate, Donald Trump shrugged off reports that Michelle Fields of Breitbart News was assaulted by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. "Perhaps she made the story up. I think that's what happened," Trump told reporters in the spin room.

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after launching what his aides touted as an assault on President Bush and his foreign and defense policies, Senator Joseph Biden found himself accepting the president’s thanks. As members of Congress scattered following last Tuesday’s attack—some to their homes, some to Capitol…

In early March, a story made its way into the national media that could have come out of Monty Python’s Flying Circus or some other absurdist British comedy revue of the mid-20th century. A group of Bowdoin College students were invited to a "tequila party" on February 20. Someone handed out…

These two books—similar in intent, different in execution, roughly simultaneous in publication—tell the story of the lives of members of two nearly contemporary collegiate cohorts. One enrolled in 1956 and graduated in the spring of 1960, the other matriculated that fall, its members moving their…

In her debut collection, Chloe Honum takes the popular theme of springtime and rebirth, and turns it on its head. Or rather, she digs deeper. Rebirth is only possible—only has meaning and significance—because of the reality of death. 

Complacency, laziness, or a simple failure to keep up can reduce foreign policy to a habit, unexamined and out of date. The United States traditionally smiled on the idea of tighter European integration. Binding the nations of Western Europe more closely together would bolster them against Soviet…

Last week, Iran tested ballistic missiles capable of striking American allies in the Middle East. As the Islamic Republic is eager to make clear, Israel is the primary target. The second launch featured the Qadr H, a precision-guided missile with a range of roughly 1,250 miles. The clerical regime…

It’s been a long time since the heyday of the great ensemble detective story. The last such production may be 2001's Gosford Park: less a mystery than a meditation on the class system. Sherlock Holmes's 21st-century metrosexual alter ego disdains mystery for melodrama, substance for style. Murder…

Last April, six “Minnesota men" were charged with seeking to support ISIS. These "Minnesota men," as headlines across the country referred to them, were all young Somali Muslims who planned to leave the United States and take up the call to jihad in Syria (see "The Threat from 'Minnesota Men,' "…

There I was, loitering in the amicable atmosphere of the green room for Fox and Friends early one morning this past December, preparing to join a panel of veterans to discuss the previous night's Republican debate. Of the panelists, two of us weren't backing a candidate, but a third—a strapping…

If there is a more awkward position in American public life than first lady, The Scrapbook is unaware of it. The president’s spouse—and of course, thus far, they've all been women—is elected by no one and enjoys a certain status undefined by any statute. But she is front and center in the press,…

Another day in L.A., another celebrity suspected of going on a killing spree. The celebrity suspect in this case goes by the name of P-22 (and no, he isn’t a rapper). P-22 is the designation conservationists have given a young mountain lion living in Griffith Park, near Hollywood. P-22 was recently…

THE SURPRISINGLY GOOD GUYS LIST The novelist Dan Jenkins once joked, "They should publish a list every year of who's not dead yet." In a similar spirit, The Scrapbook has decided to start a list of people we assumed were chattering asses but have turned out not to be. Call it the surprisingly good…

"Do these things start on time?” These were not the words I was hoping to hear when I answered the phone, particularly not en route to the ballet, running late, and trying to catch a Metro train. I should pause to specify that I was boarding the train alone, which is why I took my friend Yakov's…

The late justice Antonin Scalia thought his best opinion was his dissent in Morrison v. Olson, a case decided on June 29, 1988, when he was finishing just his second term on the Supreme Court. At issue was the constitutionality of the independent counsel law, first passed in 1978. By a vote of…

In 1989, a small videogame company called Maxis released SimCity, a city-building simulation, inaugurating what would become one of the best-selling computer game series of all time. SimCity's aim was straightforward: As "mayor," the player was challenged with designing and managing a metropolis.…

In the 1980s and ’90s, Republicans attracted, then locked up, new groups of voters: the anti-abortion movement, the Reagan Democrats, the Christian right, and the pro-gun crowd. More recently, Republicans have won the support of practically everyone associated with the energy industry, especially…

Two months ago, in an editorial whose headline expressed both a hope and an imperative—"Neither Trump Nor Hillary"—we concluded, "Can the Republican party be saved from Donald Trump and the country from Hillary Clinton? The possibility of defeat is obvious and of failure is close."

Jerusalem

Kings, queens, and emperors come and go, or used to anyway, in the good old bad old days, and the modern potentates who have left a lasting mark on the popular imagination are few. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I of England, Frederick the Great of Prussia, Peter the Great of Russia, Napoleon and Louis…

How strong a frontrunner is Donald Trump? That depends on how you look at him. The chassis of Trump’s campaign—the rally crowds, the poll numbers, the primary wins—looks like that of a traditional frontrunner. But under the hood he's running a pure insurgent campaign not unlike what Howard Dean and…

All right, Trump people, you do have a point. A number of policies pushed since the 1990s by the establishment wings of both major parties may have had bad effects on millions of people. The industrial base of this country has changed in ways that eroded the financial and moral lives of…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on Thursday's CNN GOP Debate.

At Thursday's presidential debate, CNN's Jake Tapper asked Donald Trump about incidents of violence at his campaign events:

Last July, Ted Cruz told Sean Hannity of Fox News that Donald Trump was "bold and brash, and he's willing to speak the truth. And he's taking on the Washington cartel."

After two debates in which Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio took a blowtorch to Donald Trump, the freshman senators decided to lay up.

Donald Trump was for the Iraq war, but says he was against it. Trump is now saying he wants to use more American troops to fight ISIS.

At tonight's state dinner with Canada, President Obama took a swipe at Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada.

Former presidential candidate Ben Carson said Thursday that he's moving in the direction of endorsing Donald Trump for president, calling the New York businessman "a thinking individual".

Following Donald Trump's March 8 victory press conference, the presidential candidate was asked a question by reporter Michelle Fields. Apparently the question about affirmative action wasn't welcome, because before Trump could answer, she was grabbed from behind and dragged down almost to the…

Sure, Sen. Bernie Sanders beat the odds and pulled off a significant primary win against Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's Michigan primary. But while most pundits credited disaffected white union workers and starry-eyed millennials with the Vermont senator's win, another issue could have pulled in many…

A former Trump University employee said he quit the now-defunct venture to help him "sleep at night", slamming the dubious company in a new 60-second advertisement.

In 540 BC, three Roman boys, Titus Tarquin, Arruns Tarquin, and their cousin Brutus – so dubbed because he was considered as dumb as a brute – were trekking to the Oracle at Delphi. Surely the oracle would predict that one of the Tarquin boys would be king; after all, they were the sons of Tarquin…

This morning, as the White House welcomed Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, the White House passed out American and Canadian flags to guests on the South Lawn.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the state of the 2016 GOP race leading into Florida and Ohio.

Cuba's state newspaper wrote Wednesday that the country's political order would not give any ground despite a visit from President Obama later this month.

President Obama once "ruefully" admitted to staff that he personally is the planet's largest source of carbon emissions, according to an anecdote published in The Atlantic.

During last year's budget deal (The Bipartisan Budget Act or BBA), Republicans secured more defense spending in a compromise measure for a trade of more general spending and a suspension of the debt limit. But things have grown more complicated, as the Foreign Policy Initiative's David Adesnik…

Michelle Fields, a Breitbart.com reporter and a former Fox News contributor, was grabbed by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and yanked "toward the ground like a ragdoll," an eyewitness tells the Daily Beast. The altercation occurred Tuesday night following Trump's press conference in…

Donald Trump deserves credit for coming out with a sketch of an Obamacare alternative. Unfortunately, his plan would not rescue us from Obamacare. Instead, it would further balloon the national debt, keep one of the worst parts of Obamacare in place, not encourage people to shop for value, keep…

Right after half-heartedly condemning Castro's Cuba for being "authoritarian" and "undemocratic" at Wednesday night's debate, Bernie Sanders made a pivot that was predictable to anyone who has ever eavesdropped in a coffee shop in Sanders's adopted state of Vermont: He rhapsodized on the wonders of…

Hillary Clinton violated debate rules in last night's duel in Miami, according to the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Apparently it's not easy for Hillary Clinton to do what she thinks is right to help people. That's what she said during Wednesday night's Democratic presidential debate.

During Wednesday night's Democratic presidential debate, Jorge Ramos noted, "Secretary Clinton, I want to disclose once again that my daughter Paula works for your campaign." Ramos went on to ask Clinton about her email scandal.

Wednesday night, a Democratic debate hosted by Univision and Washington Post began in Spanish. A translator referred to Hillary Clinton as the "protagonist" of the debate.

Major newspapers typically endorse a candidate from each major party during the presidential primary. The Chicago Tribune is atypical, writing in an editorial Wednesday saying that it can't recommend either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders for the White House.

Donald Trump began his post-primary press conference in Jupiter, Florida, Tuesday evening by castigating the “$38 million dollars worth of horrible lies" against him by his political opponents over the last week. But in true Trump form, the GOP frontrunner delivered a litany of lies, falsehoods,…

There hasn't been a Republican praised by both the NRA and a Koch Brothers organization this week. Yet Bernie Sanders has been.

Robby Mook says Hillary Clinton shouldn't worry so much about losing some big states. After all, Clinton would still pull in more delegates--even by losing.

From the perspective of the majority of Republican voters who don’t want Donald Trump to win the party's nomination, last night was a mixed bag. On the one hand, Trump won three out of four states, including by far the biggest one (Michigan), winning all three by double-digits or (in the case of…

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Hillary Clinton clobbering Donald Trump 51 percent to 38 percent in a general election. But Clinton leads Ted Cruz by just 2 points (47 percent to 45 percent) and is tied with Marco Rubio at 46 percent each.

On Wednesday morning, former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina endorsed Ted Cruz.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest released this statement, calling on Iran to help "provide assistance" in freeing Robert Levinson:

Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz insisted in an interview last night on Fox News that no Democrat running for president is facing an indictment.

Bernie Sanders outperformed the wildly wrong polls in Michigan in a ludicrous upset of Hillary Clinton in Michigan's Democratic primary.

Fox News reports:

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found that Donald Trump now trails each of his three remaining Republican rivals in a head-to-head matchup.

Each Monday, the boss sends out his weekly newsletter to tens of thousands of readers across the country with insights, great stories, and links. It's free to sign up for, and you can do so here.

It’s a safe bet that more Democratic voters were watching the series finale of Downton Abbey rather than the debate between Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on Sunday. But one of the most intense exchanges in the highlight reels posted Monday showed a clear deception aimed at voters to help…

Donald Trump fares terribly in poll questions that don't relate to raw support. His favorability ratings are consistently underwater, even when surveying only Republicans. Until recently, he hasn't done well in one-on-one matchups with other candidates, Democrat or GOP.

There has been a lot of discussion about media bias this election, particularly in regard to the media's non-stop coverage of Donald Trump. But it looks like the media has another bias.

China may still lag far behind the United States in total gross domestic product, but that's not how most Americans see it. According to a new Gallup survey, fully 50 percent of Americans view China as the world's leading economic power; only 37 percent of respondents think of the United States as…

Is Donald Trump afraid to release his tax returns? Sad!

It wasn't an Oscars speech. There wasn't a statuette for him to hoist, or an orchestra to cut him off after he reached page two of his thank-you list. Peyton Manning already held the Super Bowl trophy for the second time, the final time and the most unlikely time in February. He expressed his…

Princeton professor Robert P. George and Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow George Weigel, joined by three dozen more Catholic scholars and writers, have published a letter at National Review calling on their fellow Catholics to reject Donald Trump and support a "genuinely reformist candidate":

No one who laments the passing of First Lady Nancy Reagan will fail to acknowledge what has become perhaps her signature contribution to American life. "Just say no," she famously replied to a young school girl who asked her what to do when presented with drug use.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on the state of the GOP delegate race.

The play may bear Othello’s name, but the new production at the Shakespeare Theatre Company is Iago's. From the moment Jonno Roberts first appears on the nearly empty stage, the audience's entire attention is his. Menacing, manipulative, and at times raging, he controls the stage, keeping an entire…

Notwithstanding its 80 percent Albanian Muslim population, Kosovo has mostly kept infiltration by ISIS or other Islamist radicals at bay. Hashim Thaci, the former head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), elected president by the country's National Assembly on February 26, told the German newspaper…

Romanian hacker Marcel Lazăr Lehel -- better known as Guccifer -- is being extradited to the United States, say news reports.

A new Monmouth University poll conducted from March 3 to March 6 shows Donald Trump leading Marco Rubio in Florida 38 percent to 30 percent, with Ted Cruz in third at 17 percent and John Kasich in fourth at 10 percent. The most surprising result from the Monmouth survey is that Rubio has a big lead…

The National Rifle Association praised socialist senator Bernie Sanders Monday morning.

Support for Donald Trump is weakening in Michigan, while both Ted Cruz and John Kasich are on the rise, says a new poll of the Republican primary there by Monmouth University. The poll found Trump with the support of 36 percent of Michigan Republicans, who will vote in the presidential primary on…

It was all about the pants. Explosive colors, as if his legs were on fire. And patterns that looked like they were sewn together by a blind seamstress. That was the Bud Collins I remember—the longtime tennis broadcaster who died on Friday at the age of 86.

A Super PAC backing Ted Cruz is trying to KO Marco Rubio in his home state of Florida, releasing a torrent of ads ahead of the state's March 15 primary that attack the candidate from any and all angles.

In case you haven't seen it, there is a new television show out there more terrifying than anything that has ever made it to TV before (yes, even more than Thursday night's GOP debate). It is a horror-fest beyond imagining, brought to fruition by perhaps the most twisted mind in Hollywood, with a…

Amid the incessant talk of Trump “inevitability," voters' verdicts seem to be telling a rather different story. For the week including "Super Tuesday" and "Super Saturday," Donald Trump won 300 delegates (40 percent of the 750 delegates allotted across those 15 states and Puerto Rico), while Ted…

According to Nate Silver, the current delegate count for the Republican nomination is:

Thoughts from Sea Island

Bernie Sanders bristled at a question during Sunday night's Democratic debate about government's ability to address the Flint water crisis.

Bernie Sanders mocked Republicans' mental health at Sunday night's Democratic presidential debate.

During Sunday night's Democratic presidential debate in Michigan, Hillary Clinton called out Bernie Sanders for not supporting the 2009 auto bail out.

Ted Cruz's supporters have been furiously arguing this week that Marco Rubio and John Kasich should drop out of the GOP presidential race so that Ted Cruz can beat Donald Trump in a head-to-head match-up.

Actor James Stewart once speculated that had Ronald Reagan met Nancy Davis before he married Jane Wyman, Reagan never would have gone into politics. “She would have seen to it that he got all the best parts … won three or four Oscars and been a real star." That was his way of saying that, but for…

On a lackluster evening for Donald Trump, one fact stands out as particularly ominous: Trump won a massive victory among people who voted early in Louisiana. But among those who went to the ballot box on election day itself, Trump tied with Ted Cruz. That strongly suggests that Trump's campaign is…

This past Tuesday, Bill Kristol showed how it is in the self-interest of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich to focus their efforts strategically to maximize the chances of Rubio winning Florida and Kasich winning Ohio, thus denying Trump the delegates from these winner-take-all primaries on…

Rep. Joaquin Castro, the twin brother of HUD secretary Julian Castro, claimed this morning on CNN that Hillary Clinton had been cleared by the Justice Department:

With 100 percent of the precincts reporting in Saturday’s four GOP presidential contests, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz were separated by only 234 votes (out of a total of 622,579 cast), as Trump got 230,443 votes to Cruz's 230,209. The candidates' respective percentages of the vote on "Super Saturday"…

Donald Trump wants Marco Rubio to drop out of the presidential race.

Texas senator Ted Cruz scored an overwhelming victory over Donald Trump in the Kansas caucuses on Saturday. With 77 percent of precincts reporting, Cruz was winning twice as many votes as Donald Trump--51 percent to 25 percent. Florida senator Marco Rubio was in third at 14 percent and Ohio…

The Miami Herald reports:

Populism has upended the Republican presidential race, and a populist outcry against a globalist, corporatist elite echoes throughout the Western world. It’s possible for conservatives to channel some of the populist energies currently disrupting the American political scene. Conservatism and…

Seymour Lipkin, the pianist/composer who left this world recently, was once asked if he had always wanted to pursue a career in music. "I never considered anything else," he said. "There was never any … thought that I would be, say, an economist, God forbid." At times like this I can't help feeling…

Watching Mitt Romney’s excellent speech yesterday reminded me of my departed friend and colleague Dean Barnett.

A spokeswoman for the Hillary Clinton campaign seemed to make a bizarre claim on MSNBC. The FBI is not look at Hillary Clinton's server, Karen Finney claimed, they are looking at the emails themselves.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on Donald Trump's last minute decision to skip out on the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Free speech and the tax code are two topics not generally associated with each other. When it comes to university speech codes, however, the two are more related than one might think. That's why the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee held its first 2016 hearing on…

During a campaign event, Bill Clinton talked about sanctions Hillary Clinton helped put on Iraq.

In the magazine today, I have a profile of Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, who in a very short span, has become a prominent spokesman for constitutional values and unlikely leader of the anti-Trump movement. As I noted in my profile, until a few months ago, very few people had any idea that Ben Sasse…

Donald Trump cancelled his planned appearance at the largest annual gathering of conservative political activists Friday. Trump had been scheduled to address the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington, D.C., on Saturday morning. But the current frontrunner for the…

Politico's Shane Goldmacher reports that Florida senator Marco Rubio's path to winning the 1,237 delegates necessary to secure the presidential nomination before the GOP convention has vanished. That's correct. But that's also true for Ted Cruz. And it may soon be true for Donald Trump as well.

At Thursday night's debate, Donald Trump was asked about his campaign's position on H-1B visas for highly skilled workers. Trump actually changed his position on the issue from the debate stage:

With a tone of statesmanship just caustic enough to burn, Mitt Romney blasted Donald Trump in a speech Thursday. John McCain endorsed Romney's remarks later in the day. George W. Bush was quicker to criticize than both men, having stumped for his brother and saying on the campaign trail, "We do not…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with theWashington Examiner's Philip Klein recapping day one of the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Does the Hillary Clinton campaign have inside knowledge on the FBI investigation into its presidential candidate? That's what Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, suggested in an interview on CNN.

When my husband and I visited London together for the first time many years ago, we spent hours studying the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum, concentrating on the sculptures remaining from the east pediment of the Parthenon: Helios, the sun god, rising with his horse-drawn chariot at daybreak…

There is something hard, cold, and brutal about the structure. It looks like a concrete airplane hangar and rising above it is what is called the “Lantern of the Dead." The shape suggests, appropriately, an artillery shell.

I'm a speed reader—a certified speed reader, certified ever since I was in junior high school and passed a genuine speed-reading course. An Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics speed-reading course, no less.

The cockles of The Scrapbook’s reactionary heart were warmed this past week by some news from England. On second thought, make that our "traditional" heart; but the news was still good.

I went to a private college—Augustana College, in Rock Island, Illinois—and am grateful for having been able to do so. Doing so back then wasn't all that daunting: The tuition and room and board 30 years ago was just under $8,000, and with a $3,000 scholarship my parents found it a manageable…

Barack Obama and his tireless secretary of state sold the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in part as a means to reinforce Iranian “reformers," "moderates," and "pragmatists." They were always quick to add that the atomic accord stood on its own technical merits. Yet the non-nuclear dimension of…

How should we treat children who get into trouble with the law? For more than a century, American attitudes have shifted between sometimes-wild extremes.

Donald Trump walked onto the gilded stage at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Super Tuesday with the air and confidence of a magician.

Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March. Caesar: He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass. Donald Trump is no Julius Caesar. At best he's kind of a comic-book version of a Caesarist-wannabe. Had he been born two millennia ago as Donaldus Trumpum, he would have dodged the Gallic Wars, hired a…

When Donald Trump contacted him early in September 2014, Rick Santorum suspected Trump had something specific on his mind. He just didn’t know what it was. "I don't think Donald Trump does anything by accident," Santorum says. "He found an excuse to reach out to me."

Who is Ben Sasse? A lot of people seem to be asking that question these days. The junior senator from Nebraska has been in office just over a year, and even people on Capitol Hill still don’t know who he is. It's well after 9 p.m. on Super Tuesday, and Sasse is watching the election returns in his…

There has been much talk about the rupture, collapse, and/or abandonment of the Republican party as the result of Donald Trump’s rise. The most interesting and serious comment came from Senator Ben Sasse, who declared that if Trump becomes the GOP nominee, "conservatives will need to find a third…

It's now illegal to buy cigarettes in San Francisco unless you’re at least 21 years old, thanks to a new ordinance approved unanimously by the city's Board of Supervisors. San Francisco is, of course, legendary as a city open to any number of alternative lifestyle choices and feel-good…

The Scrapbook is time and again reminded that one of the occupational hazards of covering politics is schadenfreude. As unsympathetic as political creatures are, it’s always better for your soul to derive satisfaction from watching someone succeed than to take delight in their failure.

In January the Los Angeles Times reported that California attorney general Kamala Harris is investigating ExxonMobil for securities fraud and violation of environmental law. Harris hasn’t confirmed this, but leaks from her office say they are building a case on the premise that Exxon (back in the…

“A recent article somewhere said Donald Trump is a world-class businessman who goes out and he does get along with everybody," said Donald Trump early in Thursday's Republican debate in Detroit. The only "recent article somewhere" I can find where this is true is a December 29 Washington Post…

In Thursday’s Republican presidential debate, Ted Cruz called Obamacare "the biggest job-killer in America." Chris Wallace had asked Cruz what he would do to bring manufacturing jobs back to Detroit (the site of the debate) and the rest of the country, and the Texas senator replied, "The way you…

In theory, Ted Cruz’s best states are behind him. But at the Detroit debate, Cruz was clearly the class of the field and it's clear that no one should count him out as the delegate race moves into its next phase.

During Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, Megyn Kelly noted that Donald Trump's spoken position on visas for highly-skilled workers seemed to be different than the position explained on his website.

An instructor at Donald Trump's Trump Entrepreneur Initiative—originally known as Trump University—once offered advice about how illegal immigrants can purchase homes in the United States. Real estate agent Tina Merritt wrote a blog post for the Trump Blog in April 2010 titled "Can an Illegal…

Florida governor Rick Scott wrote in a Thursday Facebook post that he won't be endorsing "a Republican candidate" before his state's primary election on March 15th.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez at CPAC on his work, the 2016 race and the conservative movement.

Senator Charles Grassley has responded to President Obama's post last week on SCOTUS blog titled "A Responsibility I Take Seriously." Which responsibility might that be? "The power to appoint judges to the Supreme Court," said the president.

When people burned coal in their basements for heat, the effects were apparent. Coal dust covered walls. Soot spewed out of chimneys and coated nearby buildings and rooftops. Haze filled city streets.

On Thursday, Senator Ben Sasse focused his speech at CPAC on the Constitution. Interestingly, he did not shy away from praising a constitutional amendment long swatted aside by government.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey listed four laws Hillary Clinton possibly broke with her email server:

Mitt Romney excoriated Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and called on primary voters to rally behind three of the remaining GOP candidates in each state where those candidates can best stop Trump. At a speech Thursday at the University of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee warned…

The war on things that happen to look like smoking has reached 33,000 feet. The Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday that it would ban the use of e-cigarettes on commercial airplanes. (Many airlines had already taken the action, before the government decided to step in.)

Fifteen states have now voted in the Republican presidential race, or 30 percent of the total. Those states have accounted for 28 percent of the delegates that will ultimately be awarded nationwide. (They will eventually account for 29 percent, once all of their delegates have been allocated.) So,…

A veterans group is going after Donald Trump for his stance on the Iran nuclear deal, criticizing rhetoric in the New York businessman's record that pre-dates his tough talk about the agreement.

On Tuesday, The Five host Greg Gutfeld ripped Donald Trump on his comments on the KKK, libel laws, and more.

Hillary Clinton is trying to rally against Donald Trump. In a fundraising pitch to supporters -- asking for $1 from each of them -- Clinton is warning about "Donald Trump's America."

Last night, news broke that the man who set up Hillary Clinton's private email server has been granted immunity by the FBI. As the Washington Post reports:

With Super Tuesday now behind us, 15 of the 50 states have voted. If this were the Indianapolis 500, only 150 of the 500 miles would now be completed. Donald Trump has won won a plurality of the vote in 10 of the first 15 states—while Ted Cruz has won a plurality in 4 and Marco Rubio in 1—but the…

Last week, elections were held in Iran. If you're following the news, you'd get the sense that the outcome was a good one for people who care about human rights and the general thawing of relations between the U.S. and Iran. And further, we are told, the election result was big vindication for the…

Over the next two weeks, the non-Donald Trump candidates (except for Ben Carson) will stay in the race. That's fine. And the good news (if you're in the anti-Trump camp) is that all they have to do is pursue their enlightened self-interest, and that their interests pretty much coincide.

Ben Carson said Wednesday that he does not see a "political path forward" in the GOP nominating contest, all but assuring that he will formally drop out of the race despite assuring supporters that he will remain active moving forward.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the Super Tuesday results.

The boss was on MSNBC's Morning Joe to discuss his strategy for stopping Donald Trump.

As voters are exposed to more about presidential frontrunner Donald J. Trump's record as a businessman, the list of failed ventures comes to mind: Steaks sold at the Sharper Image, an airline, vodka, magazines, mortgages, and a travel agency.

Mitt Romney will deliver a speech at a Utah college Thursday morning on the 2016 presidential race.

As Super Tuesday wound down with Donald Trump posting a strong night, Marco Rubio stated that "no one" is going to call on him to back the New York businessman.

As a long-suffering Cubs fan who's developed an affection for the Nationals, I am nauseated that Dusty Baker is the team's new manager. In a season or two, I suspect that fellow Nats fans will share my nausea.

The hosts of MSNBC's Morning Joe took a victory lap this morning, just hours after Donald Trump's dominating Super Tuesday performance:

From Iowa to New Hampshire and down to the South, the candidates go from coffee shop to restaurant to overcrowded debate stage, tweaking their positions in the field, taking swings at each other and searching for their best fastball. It's a Darwinian contest, these primaries. They begin with a…

Well-respected constitutional scholar, Georgetown Law professor, and head of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution Randy E. Barnett makes the case for a third-party candidate if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee.

In winning Texas by 16 points, winning Oklahoma, winning (as of this writing) Alaska, and finishing second in Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Tennessee, Ted Cruz has now solidified his grip on second place in the ‎GOP presidential race. He increased his lead over Marco Rubio in states won, votes…

Not long after the polls closed in many Super Tuesday states, the narrative was already being cast: Marco Rubio was the night’s big loser. Several members of the media promoted it. So did the GOP frontrunner himself, Donald Trump, who spent several minutes of his election night press conference…

Donald Trump tightened his grip on the Republican presidential nomination by dominating Super Tuesday. But his prospects of defeating Hillary Clinton in the general election are fraught with new trouble.

There’s a classic scene in First Blood where John Rambo declares, "Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off!"

As Donald Trump racks up wins on Super Tuesday, many of the anti-Trump crowd are suggesting candidates for the GOP to rally behind.

A new ad from Our Principles PAC rips Donald Trump as unelectable, focusing primarily on Trump's controversial comments on race.

President Obama will go to Cuba to watch an exhibition baseball game between the Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays.

Donald Trump is expected to do very well as the results from the Super Tuesday contests come in tonight, but don't listen to the pundits and Trump supporters who claim that the race is over.

Israel's defense minister Moshe Yaalon said Tuesday that Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons against civilians since the U.S.-Russia sponsored "cessation of hostilities" began. "The Syrians used military grade chemical weapons and lately have been using materials, chlorine, against civilians,…

China chose the perfect moment to indicate how little regard it has for the Obama Administration's vaunted "pivot" to Asia. Just as President Obama held the first-ever summit on American soil with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders last month, Beijing deployed surface-to-air…

This past Monday's business was briefly interrupted by the specter of BREAKING NEWS on the office television, featuring a photograph of Justice Clarence Thomas. For a fearful moment I wondered what the BREAKING NEWS might be – and was quickly reassured when I saw, from the crawl at the bottom of…

Ben Carson and John Kasich will finish far from the top on Super Tuesday. But their presence in the campaign could do more than merely limit votes for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

On March 3, 2015 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the U.S. Congress to blast President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. From that day to this, Netanyahu's critics have claimed that his speech was a huge mistake that politicized the nuclear issue, offended Democrats, and reduced…

Aleksandr Dugin, otherwise known as “Putin's Rasputin," has endorsed Donald Trump for president of the United States.

Of all the crazy revelations about Donald Trump, arguably the one that seems most alarming, is that he has a fondness for reading Hitler speeches. Now the charge was made by his first wife Ivana relating to his divorce proceedings, but when asked about it, Trump's denial was less than reassuring:

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has released a statement on the Republican race, responding directly to Donald Trump but without naming the Republican frontrunner directly.

CNN reports:

A new advertisement from Our Principles PAC details the questions and ongoing legal battles of Trump University, asserting that Donald Trump "scammed" Americans into losing up to tens of thousands of dollars each.

Only 75 people came out to hear Chelsea Clinton condemn the Republicans for being racist, homophobic, and sexist. Clinton called this election the most important one of her lifetime.

In the craziest weekend of a crazy campaign year, the 2016 Republican presidential race focused on a question that one might have expected in the 1920s or the 1950s. Does the Republican frontrunner want the support of David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists?

Bernie Sanders raised an astonishing amount of money in the month of February, the Democratic presidential candidate announced last night.