May 2016

Former U.S. House representative Barney Frank responded Tuesday to Bernie Sanders's call to oust him from his role as co-chair of the Democratic party's rules committee, saying that the Vermont senator is sore about his loss to front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Providing a window into his psychology, Donald Trump embraced his image as the equivalent of a heel in professional wrestling during a press conference Tuesday.

Let us stipulate, first, that it is not a crime against morality for zoological parks to exist, especially now that zoos tend to reflect our understanding of animal cognition. Wild animals are no doubt happier in the wild; but a zoo may be seen as refuge as well as a place of confinement,…

California governor Jerry Brown, who dubbed Bill Clinton "the prince of sleaze," endorsed Hillary Clinton Tuesday ahead of the California primary despite years of denouncing the Clintons' lack of moral integrity.

Workers and retirees in Russia will likely need to tighten their belts given recent news on the state of the country's economy.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest answered questions about Hillary Clinton's email scandal, but suggested reporters talk to her campaign, rather than the White House.

Donald Trump, at long last, has revealed how much money has been donated to veterans' charities after the Republican candidate's January fundraiser. At a Tuesday press conference in Trump Tower, Trump stated that nearly $5.6 million in checks have been sent to at least 40 different charities. The…

By the standards of normal human measurements, Stephen Curry is tall. He's 6 feet, 3 inches, which substantially outstrips the average height of a male as recorded by U.S. government data, a little more than 5 feet, 9 inches.

Stop the presses: A British-born lifelong leftist doesn't much care for Donald Trump. In other news, a dog has bitten a man.

The New York Times is to be applauded for its inventiveness. With the State Department Inspector General's finding that she lied when she said she sought and received approval to use a private email server confronting its editorial writers, they had to find a way to continue standing by their…

A new survey of California ahead of the state's June 7 primary shows Hillary Clinton with a 13-point advantage over Bernie Sanders.

Jerry Brown likens Bernie Sanders's presidential run to his own run for the presidency in 1992. But in the same statement Brown endorses Sanders's rival, Hillary Clinton.

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This year's annual National Memorial Day Concert on the National Mall featured a stirring tribute to veterans of the Vietnam War. The concert, which aired Sunday evening on PBS, included a surprising addition: Hans Zimmer's "Honor" from the HBO miniseries The Pacific.

Why, how now, Kate! I hope thou art not mad: This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither'd, And not a maiden, as thou say'st he is. When Petruchio says this to his headstrong wife Katherina, it marks a moment of truce in the full-scale marital warfare that has marked their relationship from the…

It has been another rough couple of weeks for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). After the long-running scandals of shameful wait times, neglect to the point of lives lost, and the need for new leadership, they have faltered again recently with tone-deaf comparisons to Disneyland visits and…

Memorial Day

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Sunday that a condemnatory watchdog report concerning Hillary Clinton's use of a private server would be on the minds of superdelegates and the American people in the run-up to the Democratic convention.

You won't believe what Donald Trump described as his "personal Vietnam." A Trump monument comes to D.C. And what was really in Scott Walker's "juice"?

Hillary Clinton set up a private server as secretary of state in order to have intimate conversations with her family, California senator and Clinton supporter Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Sunday.

You don't want to miss the long Memorial Day weekend's big matchup Sunday night, when Dodgers' ace Clayton Kershaw is scheduled to take the mound in Queens, N.Y. to duel with Mets' ageless wonder Bartolo Colon, aka "Big Sexy." Kershaw's coming off his third shutout of the year, a two-hitter against…

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Eric Felten talks with Fred Barnes about schism between East Coast and West Coast conservatives over Trump, Jeff Anderson on Obamacare spending, and Chris Caldwell reports on whether the UK will quit the EU.

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The upcoming election will match low-tax, high-spending Donald Trump against high-tax, higher-spending Hillary Clinton. By all responsible reckonings, the next president will preside over rising deficits, funded by increased borrowing. That, of course, is what latter-day Keynesians such as…

Once upon a time in America, a state-sponsored healthcare exchange used a multi-hour Richard Simmons dance party to promote insurance coverage to young people. Somehow this is not the worst marketing ploy to youth a government has used in the last three years.

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton joked Monday that "the last thing" America needs "is a bully in the pulpit" – a gag meant to dig into rival Donald Trump. She apparently hasn't used the line since.

As Inside Higher Ed reports, Andover Newton Theological School, the nation’s oldest school of theology, plans to close its campus outside Boston in 2018. The Newton location has served as its home since the seminary's Calvinist founders fled Harvard in 1807.

The impending selection of Donald Trump as Republican nominee for president has made the right-left way of describing American politics insufficient. His views on matters like property rights and libel law have introduced legal issues not usually contested during national elections to the political…

When Nicholas Christakis, professor and housemaster of Yale's Silliman College, stood surrounded by angry students on November 6, he still believed in settling differences through civil discourse, tolerating offense and soldiering on in the name of free speech—these "hallmarks of a free and open…

The Republican National Committee is out with a new web ad that uses Trumpian language to describe its party's presumptive general election opponent for president.

This week comes yet more evidence—as if any were needed—that North Korea is not actually a functioning nation-state, but rather a criminal enterprise masquerading as a country. A spectacular bank heist earlier this year, which saw the South Asian nation of Bangladesh robbed of $81 million, has now…

Ambassador Wendy Sherman, lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear agreement, on Thursday defended the Iran deal narrative presented by senior Obama adviser Ben Rhodes in his controversial New York Times Magazine profile.

Social conservatives and evangelical leaders who were some of Donald Trump’s staunchest foes during the GOP primary now face a dilemma in the general election: Should they vote for a man as immoral as Trump in order to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president?

In a 2014 article on Common Core, Andrew Ferguson wrote, "Conservative hostility to the Common Core is also entangled with hostility to President Obama and his administration. Joy Pullman, an editor and writer who is perhaps the most eloquent and responsible public critic of Common Core, wrote…

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Ambassador Wendy Sherman fervently defended the U.S. record for protecting human rights in Iran Thursday, though the Obama administration has not sanctioned any Iranian human rights abusers since signing the Iran nuclear agreement in July.

Boxing promoter Bob Arum is getting behind the idea of a Donald Trump vs. Bernie Sanders debate. He's even offering a minimum of a $20 million donation to charity, which is more than Trump requested.

Two weeks ago the Obama administration issued a federal edict decreeing that every public school in America allow students to use whichever bathroom they choose, under pain of lawsuit and/or loss of federal funding.

Twenty years ago, Bernard Lewis and I were walking along the Thames. We’d just seen a dreary English take on naughty French theater, which provoked remembrances of Paris in the 1930s when Lewis was a student of Louis Massignon, the great Catholic orientalist born in 1883, 33 years before my friend…

The last time America felt this bad about itself was the 1970s, and perhaps the only enduringly positive result of that time was how that rotten mood led to some genuinely great moviemaking. One could say the same today about television, and indeed the dark, anxious, impending-doom-like spirit of…

Obamacare has raised Americans’ health-insurance premiums, sapped their liberty, caused millions to lose their doctors, and funneled huge amounts of power and money to Washington. It has become a vehicle for executive lawlessness​ - a federal judge recently ruled the Obama administration has been…

Our government isn’t very good at knowing when and how to change bankruptcy law, and every time it contemplates doing so it makes the wrong decision. With Puerto Rico staring at insolvency and Congress debating some sort of relief for the island, it appears this dubious streak may remain intact.

There has already been a vigorous debate about President Obama’s decision to reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba. His recent visit to Havana inspired a wide range of feelings, with many Cubans and Cuban Americans still believing it to be a mistake.

The Scrapbook swears it is doing its best not to turn this venerable magazine into Identity Politics Weekly. However, the gender-related absurdities have quickly escalated from man-bites-dog to dog-bites-man to man-identifies-as-dog—and we find it impossible to avert our gaze.

Monday through Friday, when our four kids come home from school they want a snack. Now, what I give them to eat is always a balancing act between competing interests. Do I offer them something to tide them over until dinner; get them out of the kitchen as soon as possible so I can make dinner;…

The picture I couldn’t get out of my mind from that dread-filled Tuesday morning—and still can’t get out of my mind more than a week later—is the image of the second plane, turning round and flying directly into the 110-story building, setting it instantly aflame. So insane, so like a comic book,…

While The Scrapbook toils away to bring readers the print version of the magazine each week, our colleagues are diligently working on The Weekly Standard’s digital products, such as blog posts, podcasts, and newsletters.

The middle-aged man in jeans ambles through the hotel lobby. His button-down shirt is untucked. The brim of his cowboy hat is embroidered with crossed pistols. His boots are made from the scaly skin of some pale reptile. This is what David A. Clarke Jr., sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin,…

It sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch when you first hear about it. Steve Martin—the Steve Martin—is curating a museum exhibition of works by a supposedly famous Canadian painter you've never heard of. You expect Dan Aykroyd to come out dressed as a lumberjack in a beret, using a hockey stick…

London

Cory Gardner stunned Coloradans in February by announcing he would give up a safe seat in the House to challenge Democratic senator Mark Udall, a well-liked incumbent with no obvious weaknesses. It was a huge risk, despite a strong Republican tailwind. The energetic young congressman from the…

Since he began his campaign, Donald Trump has been defying the conventional norms of politics. Many smart people thought he would not enter the race at all, for fear he would have to reveal he wasn’t as wealthy as he claimed. Instead, Trump eagerly joined the battle and declared a net worth that…

In the annals of great American press crusades, the Washington Post’s relentless campaign to force the Washington Redskins to change their name surely deserves a footnote.

In March 2015, Joe Cirincione, president of a foundation called the Ploughshares Fund, was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered about the impending nuclear deal with Iran. "President Obama's political opponents try to block everything he does," he said. "But I think the center of the American…

The debate over transgender individuals and public facilities yields more heat than light. The Washington Post Outlook section thought it was providing perspective with a recent lighthearted spread on the long history of battles over public bathrooms. Not a word was said about the more problematic…

People keep saying how unusual this year’s presidential race is. They're wrong. It's an absolutely normal Third World election.

Inside the Beltway and along the Washington-to-Boston corridor, #NeverTrump has won the hearts and minds of conservative intellectuals and the high-toned media. The dissenters—yes, there are some—make a lot less noise.

Bill Lee is running for governor of Vermont. Even if this weren’t the year of politics outside the normal, news of the former big-league pitcher's candidacy would hardly come as a surprise. You see, The Scrapbook has followed the career of the star-child popularly known as "Spaceman" for some 40…

Journalists and legal scholars have been debating merits of so-called "litigation finance" over the revelation that libertarian billionaire and philanthropist Peter Thiel helped finance an invasion of privacy lawsuit Terry Gene Bollea (Hulk Hogan) filed against the embattled digital publisher…

Marco Rubio says in an interview set to air Sunday that he wants to be "helpful" to presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, reasoning that he wants to stop Hillary Clinton from taking the White House.

The FBI has yet to schedule an interview with Hillary Clinton as part of an ongoing investigation into her use of a private email server as secretary of state, Clinton said Thursday.

Donald Trump accused Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, a crusader against greed and “lousy mortgage(s)," of buying foreclosed homes in order to make "a quick killing" Wednesday—an assertion that has revived memories of Warren's house-flipping hobby.

When you step in a mud puddle and soak your socks and dirty your pants, you shrug your shoulders and say, “It happens."

There aren't many political philosophers who operate on the level of Harvey Mansfield. By which I mean that it takes a special kind of smart to be able to explain serious philosophy in a way that even chuckleheads like me can understand it.

Donald Trump suggested he'd have a public debate with Bernie Sanders if they could raise $10-15 million for charity or women's health.

As we reported here earlier this week, a coalition of Asian-American organizations has asked the Department of Education to investigate the admissions policies at Brown University, Dartmouth College, and Yale University. The coalition says the policies discriminate against Asian-American applicants…

Left-leaning publications and transgender activists are applauding Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., today for her performance in a congressional hearing over trans issues. Talking Points Memo sums up what happened:

While Secretary of Veterans Affairs Bob McDonald is under fire for comments minimizing the impact of wait times for veterans seeking care at veterans' health care facilities, over the past eight years the VA has spent upwards of $2 million to building "smoking shelters" at various VA locations…

The FBI and Department of Justice are investigating Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe for receiving potentially illegal political donations. Among them is the $120,000 he received from Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang.

In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton unloaded on Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid. Cotton was angered because Reid singlehandedly held up a defense bill for days that went on to pass the Senate by a vote 98-0, suggesting that even Senate Democrats didn't…

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President Obama's decision to be the first sitting U.S. President to visit the ground zero site of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on May 27th as part of a G-7 Summit visit to Japan comes as no surprise. Advancing the cause of nuclear nonproliferation has been a hallmark of the Obama presidency and…

Hillary Clinton has said for months that her use of a private email server was a permitted, well-known fact in the State Department.

Have you been to the movies lately? If so, you may have noticed that just about every other weekend there's a new comic book movie out: Deadpool, Batman v. Superman,Captain America, X-Men. If you're a comic book fan (like me) this is pretty great.

The State Department has yet to release some of Hillary Clinton's emails, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday.

Before Memorial Day, the California state legislature is expected to vote on two bills restricting religious liberty. One, AB 1888, would cut off public grants to all colleges and universities without policies specifically protecting gay, lesbian and transgender students from any form…

Hillary Clinton was in high spirits at a rally in California Wednesday, throwing up a Nixon-esque peace sign and laughing heartily, hours after an audit revealed that she broke federal rules with her use of a private email server.

Rumors of Paul Ryan's impending endorsement of Donald Trump have been greatly exaggerated. That's according to the House speaker, who said he didn't know the origin a Tuesday evening Bloomberg report that Ryan was hoping to "end his standoff" with Trump and was closer to endorsing the presumptive…

Find a friend with HBO and be sure to watch All the Way, a new political drama that remembers the first year of Lyndon Johnson's accidental presidency and his unlikely passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Robert Schenkkan has adapted his critically acclaimed Broadway play for television (it left…

On May 23, the University of Missouri posted a video vaguely affirming intentions to be more welcoming after a destructive year of identity politics took its toll on the Columbia campus.

A State Department watchdog denounced Hillary Clinton's lax use of a private email server Wednesday, writing that Clinton did not properly preserve correspondence and subjected herself to security risks without seeking counsel.

On May 19, Montenegro, smallest of the Balkan states with only about 650,000 people, signed the accession protocol beginning its process of membership in NATO. If the agreement is ratified by all the countries of the Atlantic alliance, which seems probable, Montenegro will become its 29th…

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Nearly 6 in 10 Americans dislike or hate party frontrunners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, according to an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll released Tuesday.

In the Gates Foundation's annual letter, dreamily entitled "What If...," CEO Sue Desmond-Hellman writes of past progress and future goals. The foundation aims to save the world from what Bill and Melinda Gates consider its greatest problems: namely, infectious diseases, cigarette smoking and the…

At his New York Times blog, Ross Douthat "games out" a potential third-party presidential candidacy by Mitt Romney. Douthat considers situations where Romney would place in third behind Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and in second place ahead of Trump but behind Clinton. Then there's the…

Of all things, Donald Trump has decided to make Vince Foster's suicide an issue in the campaign, calling the death of the former Deputy White House Counsel in the Clinton administration "very fishy." This is yet another example of how Trump's pugilistic, let-it-all-hang-out style is not serving him…

An important victory for national sovereignty has gone largely unnoticed. Perhaps because the European Union bureaucracy is too worried about the coming referendum when Britain will decide to Remain in or Brexit the EU, the eurocracy finally bowed to a British demand. It seems the Brussels…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with managing editor Eric Felten on our 1,000th issue and his new podcast "The Confab."

Guess who's not part of the White House's Iran deal "echo chamber"? Yep, Qassem Suleimani. The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force thinks Iran and America aren't poised for realignment, but rather are at war. And Iran, he says, is thrashing the great Satan. "Iran relied on…

Politico, the Virginia-based media organization, launched subscription-based Politico Pro in 2011. In the intervening years, the federal government has increasingly come to rely upon Politico Pro as the go-to publication to keep abreast of information and developments relating to a wide spectrum of…

Former secretary of labor Robert Reich implied in an op-ed that the times have left Hillary Clinton behind, writing that her "old politics" might cost her victory in 2016.

"This is the death of fractional gifts," Manhattan art assets advisor Ralph E. Lerner told the New York Times in 2006, just a few weeks after Congress enacted the Pension Protection Act, which (among other provisions) placed certain limits on the length of time that collectors may take deductions…

The Democratic National Committee has accepted Bernie Sanders-appointed pro-Palestinian activist James Zogby to its platform drafting committee in an attempt to ease interparty tensions.

The secretary of veterans affairs, Bob McDonald, refused to apologize for comparing VA wait times to Disneyland wait times earlier today on MSNBC.

The governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, is responding to news of him being under federal investigation by shielding his close associates, Hillary and Bill Clinton.

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Murky, "holistic" admissions policies have shut out highly qualified Asian-American students at Ivy League schools for years, says a complaint that seeks federal intervention at Brown University, Dartmouth College and Yale University.

Katrina Elaine Jorgensen is the latest Republican to voice her opposition to Donald Trump's nomination for president. The communications chair of the Young Republican National Federation says she can no longer hold that position in a Facebook post published Monday.

Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe has been under investigation by federal authorities for at least a year. According to to CNN, which first reported the story, the FBI and Department of Justice are investigating whether some donations to the Democrat's 2013 campaign, particularly from Chinese…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on whether anyone will stand up to be a conservative independent challenger to Donald Trump.

Hillary Clinton argued for raising childcare workers' wages by comparing children to dogs Monday in Detroit.

In the end, Norbert Hofer came up 31,026 votes short of Making Austria Great Again. The Freedom Party of Austria’s presidential candidate lost to Alexander Van der Bellen, a Green party economist, by a margin narrower than the Brenner Pass. Just last night Hofer was leading by 144,006 votes, but…

In 'Folsom Prison Blues,' Johnny Cash sings, "I hear that whistle blowin'/ I hang my head and cry." The lyric is jarring because trains are about the freedom to travel, not imprisonment.

As Congress follows up its serious flirtation with open-borders "immigration reform" by debating open-jails "criminal sentencing reform," and as the Obama administration calls young criminals "justice-involved individuals" (you can't make this stuff up), Donald Trump has now weighed in strongly on…

Nebraskans are discussing a third-party run by their senator, Ben Sasse, after a Sunday Washington Post/ABC News poll revealed an unprecedented amount of dislike for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

President Obama called criticism of a Pacific trade deal "trying to score political points" Monday, countering arguments that the hot-button Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would be bad for the United States.

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Mitt Romney could remake his legacy from a two-time failed presidential candidate into “the last best hope" for American conservatism. That's what Jamie Weinstein writes in his latest column at the Daily Caller. Here's an excerpt:

Most students headed to college in the fall have applied for financial assistance via the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The process can be complicated and confusing for high school seniors who may be thinking about paying their own bills for the first time, but the government…

The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol features Peter Thiel:

Götterdämmerung​! 

Why are pro-regulation liberals opposed to government intervention when it comes to ride-hailing darlings Uber and Lyft?

Bill Kristol joined the political roundtable on ABC's This Week Sunday to discuss the presidential race, the latest polls, and the opportunity for a third-party conservative candidate to join the race. Watch the videos below:

Austin, TX is working hard to prove it's the epitome of stupid government. Hillary Clinton needs to brush up on how to make simple graphs. Megyn Kelly also tests out Donald Trump's hair.

Hillary Clinton laughed off her unfavorable poll numbers in an interview this morning with NBC's Chuck Todd.

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Eric Felten talks with Fred Barnes about how Mitch McConnell has united Republican senators against any lame duck Supreme Court appointment; Ike Brannon joins us to confab about the economics of the gig economy; and Matthew Continetti helps us…

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Incomes are up. Jobs are so plentiful that employers complain they cannot find workers who have the right skills and can pass a drug test, and college graduates are entering the best market in years. Industrial output is rising. Housing starts rose 6.6 percent and building permits 3.6 percent in…

Following the reintroduction of the Puerto Rico debt legislation this week, it appears that the battle over how to restructure the insolvent island may soon be headed for a Congressional vote. The basic problems with previous approaches to fixing what ails the island have been papered over, to be…

This week Donald Trump delivered what he promised in March—a list of people he would consider as "potential replacements for Justice [Antonin] Scalia." Trump wants to ease concerns among Republicans and conservatives (two categories that largely overlap) about his commitment to "conservative…

Among many lost treasures of pre-war Berlin's Bode Museum, a collection of Renaissance sculptures by the likes of Donatello, Luca della Robbia, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Francesco Laurana was just another casualty—until a team of art historians found 59 of the collection in Moscow.

On Thursday, the homepage of Google featured one of the search engine's doodles honoring the birthday of Yuri Kochiyama, a "civil rights" activist who died two years ago at age 93. After Google drew attention to Kochiyama's life, the Smithsonian highlighted the museum's "digital exhibit" honoring…

At the Washington Post, reporter David Fahrenthold writes that Donald Trump appears to have raised significantly less for veterans' groups than he originally claimed after his January fundraiser:

Following the mysterious death of Hezbollah senior military commander Mustafa Badreddine in Syria last week, speculation continues to swirl over the identity of his possible successor. The prevailing theory holds that this role will fall to Ibrahim Aqil and/or Fuad Shukr, ranking members of…

Donald Trump challenged Hillary Clinton to release a name of judges. Trump made the remarks today at the NRA:

Former presidential candidate and activist Ralph Nader has criticized the rising outrage over "microaggressions" as he mounts a campaign against perceived elitism at his alma mater.

"77 cents for every dollar!"

Latino voters, we have been told ad nauseam, are uniquely hostile to Donald Trump. As conventional wisdom has it, the property magnate's hostility to illegal immigration will doom him with this crucial, and growing, voting bloc. (This despite the fact that half of Latino voters say they are willing…

Arizona governor Doug Ducey signed legislation into law this week that eliminates some of the state's onerous professional licensing requirements. Now free to make a living without first getting government approval are citrus packers, "assayers," driving instructors, and yoga-teacher trainers.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the coming "third world" election and why an independent third-party bid could cheer us all up.

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On Friday, Hugh Hewitt asked CBS's John Dickerson whether he would think Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump to be more vindictive towards their enemies.

A soon to be released NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds that a high number of voters are volunteering, "unprompted," that they would not vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, NBC's Chuck Todd said Friday.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan argued that young Americans in particular should appreciate the power of choice:

Although Thomas Jefferson was famous for his bright red hair, most presidents have been brunets, who rapidly begin to gray at the temples as the stresses of the job take their toll. That seems poised to change. Despite their policy differences, even a cursory look at this year’s presumptive…

The Scrapbook is well aware that politics sometimes informs consumer choices. Good progressives used to avoid Welch’s candies because its owner was the founder of the John Birch Society. And The Scrapbook admits to resisting the temptation of Ben & Jerry's ice cream when it thinks of Ben and Jerry…

‘There are no two words in the English language more harmful than 'good job.' " So said Terence Fletcher, the terrifying jazz conductor played by J. K. Simmons in Whiplash. Sure, Fletcher mentally and physically abused his students—and the drummer protagonist in particular—but what he said is…

The 2014 midterm elections were a referendum on Barack Obama’s performance as president. He has done a bad job, and most Americans know it. Accordingly, the American people used the only means they had of making good their disapproval: They elected Republicans. 

Henry Clay Bottum was born in January 1826, in the town of Orwell, Vermont. As a young man, he moved west, first to upstate New York and then to Wisconsin, farming in Fond du Lac County. An abolitionist, he abandoned the Whig party of his namesake and became a Radical Republican, serving in the…

News outlets reported earlier this month that federal investigators have uncovered scant evidence that Hillary Clinton willfully violated federal record law when her subordinates set up a private email server at her Chappaqua manse to handle State Department business.

The ranger had organized a little briefing after a woman asked him, nervously, about the chances that she and her companion, while on the hike they had planned, might, you know, run into .  .  . a bear.

The Scrapbook fondly remembers the birth of this magazine in the long ago summer of 1995. We had previously worked at four small magazines and considered it something of a vocation. Those who share the vocation, or who know something of the magazine business, will understand our smirk when a…

Whit Stillman’s peerless comedies of the 1990s—Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco—feature Americans who are living in their time but are not really of their time. They are all young people, but they are not interested in the things young people were interested in when the movies were…

‘Yes, the thought of male genitalia in girls' locker rooms—and vice versa—might be distressing to some. But the battle for equality has always been in part about overcoming discomfort.  .  ." ("Taking the fear out of bathrooms," an editorial in the Charlotte Observer, May 13, 2016).

ON SEPTEMBER 10, the day before we were attacked, I attended a press preview for two small photography exhibitions devoted to Egypt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Along the Nile, a show mounted by the photography department, features photographs of Egypt made in the 1850s and 1860s.…

Yes, it’s a con. In the three weeks since Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee the remains of modern American conservatism have decayed at an alarming rate.

"When he had his period, he wondered if he should revert to the girls’ bathroom, because there was no place to throw away his used tampons. But he had started feeling like an intruder .  .  ." ("Transgender Bathroom Debate Turns Personal at a Vermont High School," New York Times, May 17, 2016).

Since the GOP primary has already produced a harrowing result, The Scrapbook has turned its attention to the ongoing Democratic primary and begun rooting for chaos. Despite the fact that Bernie Sanders has approximately zero chance of winning, he persists in staying in the race both to call…

Die young! The counsel is harsh, but the reasons are clear. Imagine portly, blustering, red-faced Romeo, burgher of a provincial Italian town, and frumpy, shrewish Juliet. “A dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death!" versus "a braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of…

Beginning with its debut issue in September 1995, The Weekly Standard has featured on its pages the work of a small army of top-notch artists, among them John Kascht, who produced many early covers—including that original cover likeness of Newt Gingrich—and who now has some 19 pieces of art in the…

I’ve spent the last few weeks rummaging through The Weekly Standard's archive. It's a musty cobwebbed place where back issues are strewn among copies of the Starr report, hanging chads from the Florida recount, and Saddam's brain. And as I looked through the dusty magazines, I made some…

California and Massachusetts regulators have decided to allow Uber drivers to be considered independent contractors rather than employees, a distinction crucial to the success of the ride-sharing app. But it’s hardly the last word on the matter. The left has been vilifying Uber as the villain of…

Now that Donald Trump is the Republican party’s presumptive nominee, there is pressure on conservatives to support him. The people have rendered their verdict, and elitist Republicans should respect the will of the voters, or so goes the much-repeated refrain. But have the people really spoken?…

Many intellectuals misunderstand Donald Trump. Intellectuals often forget that Americans vote for a man, not a white paper, and that Trump passed the very first test for Republican candidates in 2016 while the rest of the field flunked. He was angry and seemed capable of acting on his anger. Trump…

Twenty years ago, a New York Times editor phoned Stanley Fish and asked for a column. “About what?" he replied. "Anything you like," she said. Fish came up with "How the Right Hijacked the Magic Words" (August 13, 1995), which argued that conservatives had seized the liberal lexicon of equal…

On February 13, Justice Antonin Scalia died at a hunting lodge in Texas. That same day, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made this announcement: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we…

After 57 years of fighting the KGB and totalitarians of every stripe, Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky was scheduled to go on trial in England this week for charges of "making and possessing" child pornography. Despite being gravely ill, Bukovsky, 73, has fought vigorously against the charges and…

Hillary Clinton now suffers from a higher unfavorable rating than Donald Trump.

On May 11th, an article ran in the New York Times' philosophy blog, "The Stone," which bore the title, "If Philosophy Won't Diversify, Let's Call It What It Really Is." If you missed it, you can read it here: Its authors, Jay L. Garfield (Yale-NUS College, Singapore) and Bryan W. Van Norden (Vassar…

Long-time Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal refused to answer questions about his one time salary through the Clinton Foundation or Clinton's email scandal Wednesday, telling the questioner to go talk to his mother.

One of my little life goals has always been to get an Antarctica Zippo lighter from the McMurdo base at the bottom of the world.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced 11 potential Supreme Court picks. The list includes Steven Colloton, Allison Eid, Raymond Gruender, Thomas Hardiman, Raymond Kethledge, Joan Larsen, Thomas Lee, William Pryor, David Stras, Diane Sykes, and Don Willett.

Check out this piece from Bloomberg Businessweek about the Hualalai resort community in Hawaii. It's basically the best gentrification story ever; one in which a bunch of billionaires discover a high-end place run by millionaires and decide to they want to get rid of the riff-raff. The short…

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An EgyptAir flight bound for Cairo crashed Thursday, with an Egyptian official saying that terror is a "stronger" possibility as a cause than technical error.

In its latest assault on traditional Americans mores, federalism, the separation of powers, and common sense, the Obama administration is now claiming that a federal law passed more than 40 years ago (Title IX) somehow requires all public schools across America to provide access to bathrooms and…

Last week, the White House quietly, and unnoticed by any news organization, released the 2015 heroin production estimate for Mexico—it was another huge spike upward to an historic level. The amount of pure heroin produced in Mexico rose to 70 metric tons in 2015, a 67-percent increase over 2014,…

Secretary of State John Kerry took part Monday in a multilateral meeting on the future of Libya, a country perennially riven by war, crime, and terrorism. The nations represented at the meeting gathered to show support for the Government of National Accord currently attempting to establish order in…

Earlier today Secretary of State John Kerry addressed the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria, where much of the work on last year's Iran nuclear deal took place. Kerry often addresses the embassy staff as he travels from country to country, thanking them for their behind the scenes work…

In April, four colleagues rarely in alignment—Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas, Chuck Schumer of New York, and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut—jointly proposed a bill to give heirs to Nazi-looted art their day in court. The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, now awaiting…

Human beings are crucified across many axes: the here and now, on the one hand, and the infinite and eternal, on the other; the demands of our limited bodies, and the amazing abilities of our souls; participation in our earthly politics, and participation in spiritual communion with that which is…

In 1983, Jack Kemp famously rushed to the floor of the U.S. House to condemn soccer as a "European socialist" sport. Lawmakers were then trying to help America host the 1986 World Cup, and the country finally did in 1994. Yet owing in part to this denunciation from the influential congressman and…

Bernie Sanders is set to take more than 50 percent of the vote combined in Oregon and Kentucky, continuing to rack up support despite Hillary Clinton's attempted pivot to the general election.

A new poll of New Hampshire voters released by WBUR shows that Mitt Romney would start out in a competitive position if he decided to run as an independent against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: "Romney has been a leader in the Republican-led Stop Trump movement. The poll found that in a…

Let's be clear about something: Donald Trump should release his tax returns.

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This careful and first-rate national poll, done by Joel Searby of Data Targeting, has just been released. Searby's summary memo and the actual survey results are posted on Data Targeting's website; I encourage you to take a look at them yourself.

Leading Polish politician Jarosław Kaczyński rebuked Bill Clinton Tuesday for suggesting that the Polish people were sluggishly giving in to authoritarianism.

National Police Week, centered on Peace Officers Memorial Day, has come around every mid-May since President Kennedy dedicated the yearly remembrance "in honor of those peace officers who, through their courageous deeds, have lost their lives or have become disabled in the performance of duty."

Bernie Sanders revealed Tuesday that shots were fired into his Nevada campaign office and that an "apartment housing complex my campaign staff lived in was broken into and ransacked." The Democratic presidential candidate did not explicitly blame his rival, Hillary Clinton, for the actions.

Bill Clinton is campaigning almost 2,000 miles from Kentucky during its primary election Tuesday, following a rocky few days on the trail last week.

Voters are dissatisfied and bearish on the economy in a place where the Republican legislature and Democratic executive just can't seem to get along. In that respect, to describe the United States is to describe the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

A while back, the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof wrote that his fellow progressives "believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren't conservatives." Universities, he continued, "should be a hubbub of the full range of political…

If there were any doubts Paul Manafort is running Donald Trump's campaign, the latest hire should put them to rest. Politico first reported Monday evening the Trump campaign has hired Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, a veteran of several successful campaigns including Florida governor Rick…

From Buenos Aires to Buckingham Palace to Beijing to right here in America, economists are an endangered species. A few years ago the Argentine government began fining economists whose reports differed from official government figures. Inflation, said the government, is running at an annual rate of…

House speaker Paul Ryan responded Tuesday morning to new poll findings that more Republicans trust Donald Trump than him to lead the GOP.

Arkansas senator Tom Cotton hammered the president's foreign policy staff Tuesday morning, explaining why he's become "public enemy number one at the White House" over his opposition to the Iran deal.

In case there is any doubt as to the importance of the presidential election for the future of the Supreme Court, consider the court's decision Monday in Zubik v. Burwell.

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Obamacare has caused health insurance premiums to skyrocket. It has caused millions of Americans who liked their health plans to lose their health plans. It has caused doctor and hospital networks to narrow. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obamacare exchanges in Alabama and Alaska will…

At an Anti-Corruption Summit in London recently, Secretary of State John Kerry lumped in the U.S. electorate along with others around the world who are "angry" because of a "sense that the system is rigged." Kerry said that the "extremism that we see in the world today comes in no small degree from…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on why social conservatives backing Trump are making a mistake.

Yesterday, Texas Rangers’ pitcher Matt Bush hit Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista with a pitch. Running from first on a groundball to third, Bautista slid hard, late, and illegally into Rangers' second baseman Rougned Odor. The infielder threw wildly on the double play, but didn't miss…

A tiny Vermont college announced Monday that it would close its doors by the end of the month, thanks to the "the crushing weight of debt" accrued during Jane Sanders's time as president.

Hillary Clinton condemned a protester at a rally in Kentucky Monday, calling her factually misinformed.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Harvey Mansfield's book Manliness, the Hoover Institution is hosting a symposium to discuss the book next week in Washington.

Norse and Germanic mythology is often described as a series of cycles—each a collection of stories about a particular character, object, or event. In the case of Wagner's operas, the series depicts the Götterdämmerung, or the fall of the gods. It begins with the construction of Wotan's hall,…

Talk about police brutality. Wendell Pierce, an actor well known to fans of HBO's The Wire as Detective Bunk Moreland, was arrested early Saturday for simple battery. Pierce, a Hillary Clinton supporter, allegedly assaulted a Bernie Sanders fan. TMZ reports:

Arguably the greatest scene in what many consider the best movie of all time belongs to French actress Madeleine LeBeau in Casablanca.

Secretary of State John Kerry recently spoke at the Oxford Union and addressed a range of issues from climate change to extremism to political corruption. During the question and answer after Kerry's remarks, one audience member asked the secretary of state to name the "proudest achievements of the…

Vice President Joe Biden declared his love for former speaker of the House John Boehner Monday during a commencement ceremony at the University of Notre Dame.

Sexual assault is a disgusting act that has no place in any part of society, an institution of higher education or elsewhere. But efforts to eliminate it should not be manipulated to curtail freedom in the process.

Hillary Clinton said during a campaign stop in Kentucky Sunday that she plans to put her husband and former president Bill Clinton "in charge of revitalizing the economy."

The Maryland Health Connection is the state's Obamacare Marketplace. Monday, an agency press release noted that Maryland "has cut by 40 percent the number of Marylanders who were eligible for private insurance coverage when the state marketplace began three years ago." However, the breakdown of…

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On Face the Nation, Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says he was "startled" to learn Hillary Clinton's opposition to the surge of troops in Iraq was political.

This week, we learn about Donald Trump's love of chocolate, how much your senator costs, and the Trump meeting with Speaker Ryan was... interesting.

Justice and Education department officials Friday sent a “significant guidance letter" to educators throughout the country advising that public schools should allow transgender students to use the bathroom and locker facilities of their choosing—the one for boys (and men) or the one for girls (and…

An Independent Candidate?

The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton continues, but that isn't stopping the former head of the Department of Justice from holding a fundraiser for the Democratic presidential candidate.

In a Facebook post in February, Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, who has long been vocal about his opposition to Donald Trump as the GOP nominee for president, said "If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, my expectation is that I will look for some third candidate — a conservative option, a…

In a little museum at my father's law firm's home office in Cleveland, there is a collection of knickknacks and mementos of the firm's history. Whenever I visit, I have to drop by to marvel at a baseball hat that I assume nobody has ever worn, out of fear of perpetuating the curse that's led to…

In this episode of the WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Eric Felten talks about the Trump/Ryan summit with Michael Warren; Daniel Halper tells us about the new criminal gangs moving in on the marijuana business in Colorado; and Victorino Matus joins us to talk about the many lawsuits claiming that beer and…

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Call it pessimism. Or gloom. Or a feeling of being dispossessed. Or as Churchill labelled his periods of depression, Black Dog. Or, to be more modern, cognitive dissonance. It's palpable. Many businessmen here are peering into their always-clouded crystal balls and seeing a bleak future for…

The Clinton Global Initiative did not break the law, Bill Clinton told a CNN reporter on a ropeline in Kentucky.

In a game of political dodgeball Friday, Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz avoided saying whether Hillary Clinton was taking the FBI investigation into her private email server seriously.

The Departments of Education and Justice issued guidelines Friday to public schools on how they should accommodate transgender students to ensure their compliance with the administration's interpretation of Title IX, a law passed in 1972.

Bill Clinton was again confronted about his controversial 1994 crime bill during a campaign stop for his wife in New Jersey Friday.

Today Iranian foreign minister Mohamed Javad Zarif sent his condolences to Hezbollah general secretary Hassan Nasrallah on the day the party is burying Mustafa Badreddine. As one of Hezbollah’s top military commanders, Badreddine is believed to have played a role in the 1983 Marine barracks…

The greatest power forward in the history of professional basketball—not a modest description for such a modest competitor—turned 40 in April, and despite his 7-foot height and two decades of mileage in the NBA, he's maintained a modicum of his best form. He scored an efficient 19 points Thursday…

Among those Washington Republicans who met with presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump Thursday was Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Priebus tweeted a message that his meeting with Trump, Paul Ryan, and other congressional leaders was "great" and a "very…

President Barack Obama extolled hip Nordic innovations such as Angry Birds, electronic music by Avicii, and Legos during a welcoming ceremony for leaders from the region Friday.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on Donald Trump's unity overtures and the bizarre recordings of Trump trying to serve as his own PR flack.

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Barack Obama hosted a 9/11 truther at the White House. Yesterday, singer Macklemore tweeted, "Honored to be at @WhiteHouse with @MTV to talk to @POTUS about opioid addiction. Really excited for this project."

Administration critics are slamming Secretary of State John Kerry's globetrotting in recent weeks to drum up investment in Iran with international banking and business leaders, and say Tehran has a responsibility to clean up its financial act in order to attract investment on its own.

Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal dismissed the ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton's role in the attack on the Benghazi consulate in Libya Thursday, calling it a thing of the past.

I'm being stalked by a pair of cheap eyeglasses. They keep looking out at me with their eyeless stare. They’re joined by a zombie pair of khakis, Hillary Clinton, and, creeping along on their spindly little legs, folding music stands. None of them will leave me alone.

Deutschland 83, a hit German television show, available on Sundance Channel, has been lauded for its authentic evocation of early-1980s Cold War-gripped Europe. That much is true, but as far as the nonaesthetic elements of the series go, it is derivative, hackneyed, and predictable. When, several…

"Because of an editing error, an article on Monday about a theological battle being fought by Muslim imams and scholars in the West against the Islamic State misstated the Snapchat handle used by Suhaib Webb, one of the Muslim leaders speaking out. It is imamsuhaibwebb, not Pimpin4Paradise786” (New…

All administrations are short-sighted. Even the brightest, most reflective people can develop acute tunnel vision when they join the paper-pushing, crisis-a-minute senior ranks of the National Security Council and the State Department. When the president becomes obsessed with one issue, as Barack…

In his last State of the Union address, Barack Obama asked, “How do we make technology work for us and not against us?" This was one of Obama's four "big questions" during his speech, and the audience cheered as he asked it—for good reason. It echoes the fears of regulators everywhere.

In Philadelphia sports lore, there is a famous phrase: “For who? For what?" In 1995, the Philadelphia Eagles were thought to be one player away from Super Bowl contention. In the offseason they signed the NFL's best free agent, Pro Bowl running back Ricky Watters. In the final minutes of the first…

I  don't know whether Gideon Gono, former governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, is still dreaming big dreams. But if he is, news reports from America must, if only briefly, have offered him hope that his talents would once again be in demand.

Herewith The Scrapbook takes note of the troubling alignment of two separate stories.

Colorado Springs

Since the New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof has been the butt of Scrapbook humor on -occasion—indeed, was once the subject of a Parody—it's only fair that we give Mr. Kristof credit when credit is due. We're referring, in this instance, to his recent Sunday Times column entitled "A…

Contributing editor Yuval Levin published a new book last week: The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism. It couldn't have come out at a better time.

People love Captain America: Civil War, the latest Marvel comic-book movie. I mean, they love it. Say a word against it and their eyes narrow; by doing so, you have revealed to them your hatred of fun, and for this you must die. Well, maybe not die. Rather, they are sure you exist in a living death…

THE ONLY INTERESTING QUESTION left to ask about Salman Rushdie is: How can a writer so good be so bad? There are passages in Rushdie’s novels that are among the best of the past quarter century: funny and moving and written with real verve. He is a prodigiously talented prose stylist with a…

At the end of his opening statement at the traditional postelection presidential press conference, Barack Obama offered this assurance: “I continue to believe we are simply more than just a collection of red and blue states,” he said. “We are the United States.” 

Hillary Clinton sounds like Paul Ryan on the economy. She says she’s for "strong growth, fair growth, and long-term growth." She would abandon the slow-growth economics of President Obama and return us to those wonderful days in the 1990s when husband Bill was in charge. This is a different Hillary…

With Donald Trump the presumptive nominee of the Republican party, conservatives face their biggest crisis in generations. Professional Republicans are mostly boarding the “Trump Train," convinced their self-interest requires party unity, but principled conservatives find the choice between the…

On May 5, the New York Times posted online a lengthy and candid interview with Ben Rhodes, the 38-year-old deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. The interview was something of a get—the profile by veteran journalist David Samuels, which would be published in the May 8…

For nearly two decades now, conservatives have been scoffing at Hillary Clinton's suggestion that there is a "vast right-wing conspiracy," let alone that it is responsible for the fact that her husband can't keep it in his pants. However, the statement has also always had a sinister undercurrent,…

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the document that shaped the modern Middle East. Known officially as the Asia Minor Agreement, it was authored by the British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart François Georges-Picot. They were charged with the task of…

The U.S. government is forecasting that the world's coal consumption will increase almost 15 percent in the coming decades, despite new regulations that will slow the industry significantly stateside.

Washington—

It may seem, at times, that the left has lost its mind when it comes to transgenderism – either blindly supporting its agenda or dutifully keeping council. But there have been a handful of leftist critiques over the years of both the reality and politics of transgenderism. These have been mostly…

Paul Ryan is not endorsing Donald Trump for president—not yet, at least. But it was clear from the House speaker's Thursday press conference that Ryan is moving in that direction. The Wisconsin Republican told reporters that his meeting with Trump Thursday morning was "encouraging" and "pleasant."

Behold what Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, Twitter, and the knowledge that media fetishizes Twitter reporting hath wrought:

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

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P.J. O'Rourke endorsed Hillary Clinton, "the second worst thing that could happen to America" Wednesday in The Daily Beast.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on why Donald Trump needs to make inroads with Congressional Republicans.

There have been two defining moments in Paul Ryan’s political career: The first was his leading the opposition to Obamacare in 2009 and 2010. (Can anyone forget the "Health Summit," or his short speech on the night of the Obamacare vote in the House?) The second was his getting essentially the…

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney called on Donald Trump to release his tax records Wednesday in a statement posted to Romney's Facebook page.

Hillary Clinton was guaranteed to lose the heart of coal country in West Virginia's Democratic primary election Tuesday. But third place in a two-person race?

Global Engagement (formerly known as Think Again, Turn Away) is the State Department's anti-terrorism communications division specializing in social media messaging to dissuade would-be terrorists from joining ISIS or similar groups. Tuesday, the Global Engagement Twitter account tweeted a link to…

In 2010, the Georgia Board of Regents voted to adopt two policies for five of the state's public universities. One would restrict in-state tuition to only lawful residents of the state of Georgia and the other restrict admission to lawful residents of the United States. By 2010, neighboring South…

Clinton supporter Susan Shin Angulo almost uttered the phrase "Under God" during her introduction for Hillary Clinton in Blackwood, New Jersey Wednesday.

Tuesday's edition of The New York Times featured a piece on Hillary Clinton's odd obsession with U.F.O.s, or, as she calls them, "unidentified aerial phenomenon" (the "latest nomenclature," the former secretary of state told Jimmy Kimmel in March).

Federal officials announced Tuesday that the Justice Department won't pursue the death penalty against the suspected ringleader of the 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

The undergraduate course "Men in Literature" was taught eight times from 2005 to 2015 at Springfield College in Massachusetts. It drew healthy enrollments and was reviewed favorably by a large majority of the students who took it. In 2010, the course was formally approved by the college curriculum…

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Chelsea Clinton's husband is reportedly closing his Greek hedge fund. The news from Marc Mezvinsky comes after the fund is said to have lost 90 percent of its value.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Fred Barnes says Donald Trump needs to bring conservatives, especially Paul Ryan, into his camp:

Florida senator Marco Rubio said in an interview Tuesday that he intends to support Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the November election despite the fact that he still believes Trump should not have access to the United States' nuclear weapons launch codes.

Marco Rubio implicitly criticized Donald Trump's foreign policy platform Tuesday but said that he would not vocally condemn the presumptive Republican nominee in the months before the election.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the state of the race, one week into the world of Trump as presumptive nominee.

On Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden said he was confident Hillary Clinton will be president.

Allegations that Facebook censors conservative news from its "trending topics" widget has drawn condemnation from the right. The response would have been just fine had it included political complaints and not a government inquiry.

Harvard president Drew Faust announced Friday a policy to restrict members of single-sex final clubs, fraternities, and sororities from leadership positions elsewhere on campus—effectively coercing the gender-neutralization of groups which operate independently.

Still on Donald Trump's to-do list is carrying out a promise he made two months ago—that he'll release a list of people that, if elected president, he'd choose from in filling Supreme Court vacancies. Trump is drawing up such a list in order to ease concern among conservatives that he might pick a…

According to the Irish Independent, the number of Americans requesting Irish passports has increased by 14 percent since their Scottish cousin Donald Trump joined the presidential race last summer. Correlation doesn't mean causation, of course, but more than a few people have remarked upon the…

Emirates Airline it's decidedly not, but North Korea's flag carrier Air Koryo has strived to improve its inflight product in recent years. The state-run airline rolled out "new planes, new in-flight entertainment options, [and] smart new uniforms for the cabin attendants," this year, noted…

It was recently announced that President Obama plans to raise $1 billion to build his presidential library in Chicago. By any standard, that's an eye-popping figure. It's nearly as much as Obama spent on his 2012 campaign for president.

Paul Ryan and Donald Trump, ostensibly the two leading politicians of the Republican party at this point, hardly overlap in their long-term visions for the U.S. economy.

On The Kelly File, Wisconsin talk show host Charlie Sykes gave an eloquent defense of why he remains against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Sunday's New York Times Magazine story by David Samuels on President Obama's deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes has created quite a stir. It's not every day that a senior White House official brags about how the administration has successfully manipulated what he portrays as an ignorant…

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Man, Ben Rhodes had an excellent weekend. The 38-year-old Mets' fan who serves as President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communications got to watch the press tear itself apart in rabid confusion, which proves one of his essential points—the U.S. media is a pile of…

The White House announced this morning that President Obama "will make an historic visit to Hiroshima with Prime Minister Abe to highlight his continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

BuzzFeed is calling the involvement of Paul Manafort in the Trump campaign, “An intelligence classification vetting nightmare scenario." This, because Trump is set to start getting classified intelligence briefings as the presumptive Republican nominee.

Over on his personal site, frequent contributor Quin Hillyer writes on the need for a third-party candidate:

On Monday, Chris Matthews asked Hillary Clinton's friend and aide Sidney Blumenthal whether the FBI had interviewed him about her email scandal.

Hillary Clinton was stunned Monday when a small business owner told her that the cost of her health insurance had increased nearly two fold.

The State Department announced Monday that the agency found no emails to or from Bryan Pagliano, Hillary Clinton's IT specialist, while Clinton was secretary of state.

The State Department said Monday that it has been unable to track down any emails to or from Hillary Clinton's IT specialist, Bryan Pagliano, during Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.

The Weekly Standard has partnered with PodcastOne to launch a new podcast: The Confab.

If Congress has any self-respect or desire to preserve its own prerogatives, it needs to overturn the FDA's new proposed regulations on e-cigarettes.

There exist understandable reasons why well-intentioned Republicans who think the worst of Donald Trump could be convinced to support him. Among those reasons is that the next president will likely have the opportunity to appoint a few Supreme Court justices. Despite Trump's many shortcomings, he…

I am often asked by fellow conservatives about my experience with Governor Chris Christie as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey in 2014. When I reply that Gov. Christie and his team, after remaining scrupulously neutral during a tightly contested four-way primary, were very…

Earlier today, it was reported that Facebook's "news curators" suppressed conservative media and news about Facebook in Facebook's trending news feed.

In a new defense of education against further closing of the American mind, George Mason University president Angel Cabrera responds to the New York Times in a letter to the editor published May 9:

When three Nobel laureates (Richard Roberts, medicine; Finn Kydland, economics; and Aaron Ciechanover, economics) announced that they would take a vacation to North Korea recently, the organization that sponsored the junket, the International Peace Foundation, was at pains to declare that the trip…

When talking with people who work in the conservative social media world, one will likely hear complaints about Facebook's newest algorithm adjustment making it more difficult for their content to reach people. A new revelation may provide some answers.

The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol feature Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield:

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Video from the Associated Press shows North Korea expelling a BBC journalist:

On Sunday, CBS's John Dickerson asked Hillary Clinton about her email scandal.

Days after Donald Trump's last Republican opponent dropped out of the race, Trump is beginning to sound more liberal on economic policy.

Tweet

On Sunday, Senator Pat Toomey followed Speaker Paul Ryan's lead, and offered some advice to Donald Trump. In an op-ed on Philly.com, Toomey writes, "I find his candidacy highly problematic."

On Sunday, Sarah Palin told CNN's Jake Tapper that Speaker Paul Ryan is ignoring the will of the people and has not supported Donald Trump because he wants to be president in 2016. For those reasons, Palin said she will oppose Ryan in his primary election.

On Trump

Speaking at the Howard University graduation ceremony in Washington, D.C., President Obama told the graduates of the historically black college to "be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness."

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Franklin Roosevelt, a cosseted mama's boy unpopular at Groton, didn't get into the Porcellian Club even though he was a legacy—and, according to some, he never quite got over it. Mark Zuckerberg was not elected to any of the secretive all-male final clubs despite their becoming, per Ross Douthat's…

Now we know. It will be Hillary Rodham Clinton vs. Donald J. Trump only some seven months from now, when election day arrives and puts a merciful end to our elongated campaign season. The winner will inherit an economy that, in all probability, will be continuing its slow crawl, with growth at or…

On April 26, Pope Francis recognized the martyrdom of 38 Albanian Christian church leaders killed during the Communist terror of Enver Hoxha, who ruled the small and poor Balkan country from 1944 until his death in 1985. Ecclesiastical affirmation of their martyrdom is an important step toward…

On Thursday, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump sat down with Fox News anchor Bret Baier for a wide-ranging interview. Baier asked many questions, Trump gave some answers. The entire interview is revealing, in much the way Trump's session with the Washington Post editorial board was…

It's time for the Great Leap Forward—Version 2. Or at least MetroForward 2, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's (WMATA) plan to fix the smoke-filled platforms, electrical fires, broken trains, and service outrages that have become alarmingly frequent commuting occurrences.…

Donald Trump, who has never ever gone personally bankrupt, has a plan to attack our mounting national debt: stiff creditors.

The Democratic National Committee has selected bank board member and Clinton ally Barney Frank to co-chair the party's rules committee, a move that could aggravate Bernie Sanders' attempt to push his anti-big bank agenda at the Democratic Convention in July.

As Londoners anoint their first Muslim mayor, Labour MP Sadiq Khan, readers of Michel Houellebecq's satire Submission might remember the fictional Muslim Brotherhood president of France, Mohammed Ben Abbes. In the controversial 2015 novel, Abbes' moderate theocratic platform slides into full…

They may as well hang a sign on every city hall that reads, "Eat No Chikin."

"There will always be an England," sang Vera Lynn in the dark early days of World War II. Probably true, unless the nation becomes subsumed in the EU, which has as its goal the elimination of the nation-state. But it is surely true that there will always be a Paris, or, as Rick so famously put it,…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the 2016 election.

At the Washington Examiner, Philip Klein reports that Mitt Romney doesn't intend to endorse Donald Trump.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said Friday that Hillary Clinton's attorney has been in contact with the Justice Department throughout the investigation into her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

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It's not every day that you get a long, tortured analogy likening the Republican party to the post-revolution Soviets. But it's the post-Indiana Trump Day, so buckle up. Here we go.

In a country as disposed to war as the United States has been, the relationship between the commander in chief and his admirals and generals is as critical as that between the president and Congress. Just how critical that relationship may be is the theme of this book, the first full-length history…

RONALD REAGAN is unquestionably the most important political figure in American politics since World War II. His successful quest for the presidency transformed the Republican party, invigorated the conservative movement, and worked the demise of "Great Society" liberalism. His strong stands during…

THE ALL-NEWS-IS-BAD-NEWS LEFT The Scrapbook may have given the impression in recent weeks with our Surprisingly Good Guys List that the Left was defecting from its traditional anti-Americanism almost as quickly as brighter-than-average Pashtun soldiers are deserting the Taliban. Not so; the world…

Well, this has been a most unexpected primary/caucus season. More than 45 percent of the voters are for either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders. For many friends of liberty, this means about half the country has embraced one of the two worst presidential candidates in American history. They’ve chosen…

THE PHRASE "FAMILY VALUES" has always seemed an empty one on the lips of American politicians. That’s because those who use it are very reluctant to say what it means. For a politician—whose constituency is bound to in-clude a vast assortment of divorced couples, single moms, cohabiting young…

The child-free are getting uppity again. Last week USA Today reported on a minor trend in Britain, where a few companies are now offering employees paid leave upon the occasion of the worker getting a pet. It is called "paw-ternity" leave.

Ted Gioia has established himself in the forefront of contemporary writers about jazz. The Imperfect Art (1988) is a short collection of essays about the form; The History of Jazz (2011) provides a fair-minded survey of the art, from Buddy Bolden to Wynton Marsalis; most recently, The Jazz…

A recent book in the Yale University Press series on "Jewish Lives," a biography of the nineteenth-century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, opens provocatively: "Does Benjamin Disraeli deserve a place in a series of books called Jewish Lives?" Perhaps not, a reader of the book might well…

Sing Street is laden with melodramatic elements: a marriage disintegrating against the background of a national economic crisis, a vicious priest who beats up a boy, a wayward teenage girl with an institutionalized mother and a sexually abusive father, even a reckless emigration on a leaky…

If you’re expecting Donald Trump to change now that he's the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, forget it. Trump says he can act presidential any time he wants to. But that time rarely comes. There's a reason for this. Trump equates being presidential with being boring. And boring isn't…

Hollywood, Fla.

"Sometimes party loyalty asks too much." —John F. Kennedy, 1960 I have always voted for the Republican presidential candidate. From Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to Ronald Reagan (twice) and George H. W. Bush (twice) and Bob Dole, from George W. Bush (twice) to John McCain and Mitt Romney—I've…

President Obama loves the European Union. He believes the British people should too. And to anyone who might dissent from his view when the question of the U.K.’s EU membership is put to a national referendum on June 23, he has a threat: Vote to leave and he'll upend the "special relationship" by…

In 1717, Frederick William, the king of Prussia, gave his 5-year-old son a full company of lead soldiers for Christmas. This was in keeping with the monarch’s insistence that the boy's education should be guided by the principle "that there is nothing in the world that bestows on a prince more fame…

It was almost as if Donald Trump wanted to give Republican voters one last look at what they would be getting if they chose to nominate him as the head of their party—as if he wanted to show officeholders who would endorse him exactly what they'd have to explain and rationalize over the next six…

A new generation of college-aged students, for whom the Cold War and communism is a distant phenomenon, have had democratic socialism legitimized for them by Bernie Sanders. It is just one short step for this same generation to argue that if socialism is a goal worth fighting for, then perhaps…

Of the 54 Senate Republicans, only 2—Mark Kirk of Illinois and Susan Collins of Maine—support holding hearings this election year on President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Kirk, but not Collins, also says he would consider voting for the nominee, making…

When I was a boy living in coastal Massachusetts, I frequently heard stories about the great hurricane that crashed into Long Island and New England on Sept. 21, 1938. Most of the people who described it to me—my father and some of his friends—were only in their 30s and early 40s when they told me…

When it comes to Hollywood, The Scrapbook is grateful for small favors. And last week we got a very small favor from Hollywood, for which we are suitably grateful.

The Scrapbook would like to take a break from chronicling transgender idiocy week in and week out. But the Obama administration’s latest threat to North Carolina simply can't go unmentioned. "The federal government took on North Carolina's controversial 'bathroom bill' Wednesday, giving the…

Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. But that doesn’t change the fact that he is manifestly unfit to be president.

The party has nominated someone who cannot win and should not be president of the United States. We anticipate a landslide defeat, and then a struggle to take the party back from his team and his supporters and win the following presidential election. Meanwhile, we need to figure out how to conduct…

In Washington, the talk of the town for weeks has been Paul Manafort, the adviser recently hired by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Just read Politico, the insider journal that has mentioned Manafort in more than 100 articles in the last month. Or tune into one of the Sunday political talk…

Business schools are like sanatoriums for the English language—places where words go to languish and softly fade, easing towards a coughing, clichéd death.

The boss appeared on CNN Thursday to discuss the Republican party with Donald Trump at its forefront, and to press the case of how a conservative alternative to Trump and Hillary Clinton in the general election could pull off a victory.

On Thursday, Speaker Paul Ryan said he isn't ready to endorse Donald Trump.

The State Department objected Thursday to a Romanian hacker's claim that he breached Hillary Clinton's private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

Huma Abedin has been interviewed by the FBI, CNN reports. Other aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been contacted by the FBI as well.

Republicans and their allies seem determined to try to blame their electoral woes on anything other than their own poor messaging, their failure to listen to Main Street voters (a fact that Donald Trump capitalized on) and their woefully deficient nomination process (which has now produced Trump as…

North Korea will convene a Workers' Party Congress in Pyongyang on Friday for the first time since Jimmy Carter was president. Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather, convened the first six such party congresses, where a party-based juche doctrine of national self-reliance was put forward as the…

Wednesday at sundown Yom HaShoah began. This Holocaust Day of Remembrance honors six million dead so that the world may never forget. "Hatred," a story written by Zuzana and Karel Tausinger in 1971 and published today in Mosaic, movingly illustrates the painful necessity of remembering. And earlier…

It’s hardly any wonder that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has a "mind meld" with his boss, the president. According to a David Samuels New York Times Magazine article to be published Sunday and already posted to the website, Rhodes, like Barack Obama, is contemptuous of "the American…

New Mexico governor Susana Martinez has no desire to be tapped as Donald Trump's running mate, a spokesman tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Several Latino groups are protesting Hillary Clinton's visit to Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Daily News reported Thursday.

In March, Donald Trump said that women who have abortions should be “punished." He quickly backtracked on the comment, but pro-lifers were incredibly frustrated and angered because his callous remark flew in the face of decades of carefully crafted messaging about how ending abortion is really…

The nomination of Donald Trump forces Republicans to look hard at their party, themselves—and each other. In a column for Red State, Ben Howe revealed that the zombified state of the Trump-afflicted GOP has led him into the depths of doubt, "wait…we ARE the stupid party?" To this, voices from the…

Following the results of Tuesday's Indiana primary, THE WEEKLY STANDARD received a letter from two readers, addressed to the Republican National Committee. With the writers' permission, that letter is reproduced below:

Reviews and News:

Late Wednesday evening, longtime critic of Donald Trump, Senator Ben Sasse, tweeted a series of thoughts on 2016. He published them on Facebook as "An Open Letter to Majority America."

Tuesday the Washington Free Beacon reported that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid Nevada-based American Document Destruction $187 for document and/or computer hard drive destruction. The payments are reported on documents filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) by the campaign.

Middlebury College in Vermont is requiring all first-year students to take a course covering topics like inclusivity, identity, privilege, and inequality.

New media and the old are at war. A new MSNBC promo features a direct attack on Twitter.

After last night, Donald Trump is the "presumptive" presidential nominee for the GOP. What that means is that the Republican party is now effectively operating under Pottery Barn rules: You broke it, you bought it, Trump supporters. Now it's your job to get him elected. In theory, that shouldn't be…

A bashful Bill Clinton took the stage in California Wednesday while campaigning for his wife, telling an admiring audience member that it had been a long time since a female had complimented him on his appearance.

The Washington Metro Transit Authority (WMATA) may provide the subway that Washington, D.C. deserves, but not the one it needs.

The general election has begun. And Hillary Clinton wants the press to get tough on Donald Trump.

When row upon row of neighborhood homes continued to display the nation's flag in the weeks after 9/11, it seemed confirmation enough that the proud public spiritedness of the World War II years had reemerged from the attics of a younger generation's hearts. Also a WWII veteran, the late…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the Trump win in Indiana, and the news that Cruz and Kasich are dropping out.

"Here I stand; I can do no other." — Martin Luther

In the May 9th issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, the Scrapbook reports a particularly shameful episode of campus outrage. Recently, at George Mason University, thuggish puritanical progressivism apotheosized in a meeting of the university's faculty senate and a vote to disapprove of naming the law…

A new CNN poll shows Hillary Clinton crushing Donald Trump among registered voters by 13 points (54 percent to 41 percent). The same survey shows that Clinton trails Ohio governor John Kasich by 7 points (51 percent to 44 percent) in a general election match-up.

Reviews and News:

During the final days of Ted Cruz’s now defunct campaign, the GOP's presumptive nominee Donald Trump repeatedly raised and amplified a largely debunked story in the National Enquirer linking Cruz's father Rafael to John F. Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. The story is based on a photo…

What happened to Ted Cruz? A month ago, he won the Wisconsin primary in a landslide and was poised to combat Donald Trump with a fresh burst of enthusiasm. Now he's out of the race and Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

The chairman of the Hillary Clinton campaign, John Podesta, has released a statement framing the general election match-up.

On Tuesday night, following a big loss in Indiana, Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race.

Indianapolis

TV networks called the Indiana primary for Donald Trump immediately after polls closed Tuesday night.

Hillary Clinton was met by dozens of enraged protesters and a middle finger or two during a campaign stop in Williamson, West Virginia, earlier this week.

If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, then a few months from now America may be treated to something it has never seen before: a presidential nominee being called to testify in his own defense while being sued for fraud.

Talk radio's leading political characters have split into separate camps during this highly charged election season: Mark Levin and Glenn Beck have thrown in firmly with Ted Cruz, while a certain San Francisco-based botanist has consistently served as one of Donald Trump's leading boosters in the…

The FBI has yet to interview Hillary Clinton about her use of a homebrew email server as secretary of state, Clinton said Tuesday.

Donald Trump awakened this morning to a Wall Street Journal editorial, "The Third-Party Temptation," warning against the search for an independent candidate who "would give conservatives an honorable alternative to Trump-Hillary." The Journal in effect called on all concerned to (grudgingly) accept…

Donald Trump's national poll numbers continued to ascend as he concluded an incautious week that began with him embracing "tough guy" and convicted rapist Mike Tyson and concluded with him tying Ted Cruz's father to the JFK assassination.

The next big crisis facing commercial banks and corporate bondholders doesn't involve mortgages, but it has everything to do with the mortgage crisis that began in 2008. The knee-jerk reaction of Congress that created the legislative mess known as "bank reform" has driven lenders away from…

Last week, the Georgetown Memory Project (GMP) inspired op-eds and editorials pondering what Georgetown University should do for the descendants of 272 slaves whose 1838 sale saved D.C.'s Jesuit university from bankruptcy. GMP raises funds for research to track down these descendants and to honor…

Reviews and News:

The New York Times has a lengthy report about what's going on at The Late Show on CBS since Stephen Colbert took over for David Letterman nearly a year ago. The Times's write-up bends over backwards to put a brave face on it, but Colbert's show thus far has been a pretty big failure. CBS just hired…

On Monday, WKRC reporter Cammy Dierking talked about going to the White House and interviewing President Obama. However, it seems the interview was conditional.

South Bend, Ind.

Hillary Clinton raked in $2.4 million over the course of three days from selling “Women's Cards," the Clinton campaign said Monday. The haul is nearly a tenth of her fundraising total for April.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with deputy online editor Chris Deaton reporting from the campaign trail in Indiana.

Hillary Clinton has a very complicated opinion of coal. In March, she proudly declared, "we are going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."

Senator Ted Cruz was met with a line of hostile Donald Trump supporters at a campaign event in Indiana Monday, a day before the state's primary.

During a Bernie Sanders rally on Monday, a man with a blue beard and futuristic glasses blew kisses at the Vermont senator.

At the Detroit NAACP Annual 61st dinner on Sunday, Hillary Clinton bemoaned systemic economic and social problems.

Madison, Ind.

A man recently killed his friend for picking up the check at an Istanbul restaurant. Anyone who's familiar with the sport of Middle East check wrestling cannot be surprised. Dining companions can go at it for half an hour arguing over who gets to pay the check and thereby prove one's magnificent…

Reviews and News:

Hillary Clinton finally raised more than Bernie Sanders last night, according to press releases from their respective campaigns. According to the Clinton campaign, Hillary raised $26.4 million last month. And according to the Sanders campaign, Bernie pulled in $25.8 million.

Marco Rubio may be warming to Donald Trump. In an interview with the Palm Beach Post, Rubio praises the Republican frontrunner.

Back from the Broadmoor

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump about Ted Cruz making Mike Tyson's endorsement of Trump into a campaign issue.

This week, Joe Biden and Chris Christie returned, the Donald Trump-John Kasich fight heated up, and Kasich forgot the alliance he made with Ted Cruz.

Donald Trump has experience having to justify his supporters. In February, he unnecessarily wavered off track—speaking of experienced—in declining to dissociate himself from the backing of white supremacist groups and David Duke, a man he had publicly denounced on multiple occasions in the past 15…