August 2016

The Obama administration is still weighing whether to apply "mandatory sanctions" called for in multiple laws on the sale of the S-300 air-defense missile system from Russia to Iran.

Donald Trump went to Mexico Wednesday on a risky, last-minute trip in advance of his big policy speech on immigration. He had two goals: to provide a dramatic, newsy preview of his immigration policy speech on Wednesday night, and to look presidential.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on Donald Trump's trip south of the border to meet with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto.

The way John Kerry sees it, there is no joy when the president goes on The View.

You might not believe this, but we're just four weeks out from the first presidential debate and behind the scenes, prep is well underway. Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that Laura Ingraham is helping the Trump campaign prepare for the debates and may even wind up playing the part…

The new Marquette law school poll shows shows Hillary Clinton up just 3 percentage points over Donald Trump among likely voters in Wisconsin, where she led Trump by 15 points earlier this month:

According to ABC News, Hillary Clinton has reached a new high in unpopularity. In their latest poll, 56 percent of Americans view Clinton unfavorably, up 6 percentage points in three weeks. Also notable is that Clinton is underwater with women, and her general unpopularity with other key…

Hillary Clinton has built-in advantages in the presidential race. The media's liberal bias that benefits her campaign has been on display for months. After her coast-to-coast fundraising whirl last week, Clinton's war chest is overflowing. She "is pushing the boundaries of fundraising further than…

A conservative watchdog granted the opportunity to seek written testimony from Hillary Clinton about her email saga filed its questions for the former secretary of state in federal court Tuesday, apparently compelling her to answer under oath before the end of September.

Ask either presidential campaign about any fraught issue in the ideologically riven realm of education policy and ye shall receive an answer in the form of a question or a "hold that thought"—mutterings about "school choice" and "results!" notwithstanding. For now, anyway, all we have is a…

Brian Mast, a first-time candidate and political novice, won a crowded Republican primary for a South Florida House seat Tuesday. Among the candidates he beat were the wife of the state senate president. The 35-year-old father of three isn't just a multi-tour combat veteran of Afghanistan—he's a…

It has long been obvious that it's not too hard to design a health-care plan that beats Obamacare. Nonpartisan scoring now finds that the House Republican health-care plan (released earlier this summer) would beat Obamacare in terms of reducing premiums, reducing federal spending, increasing access…

On Tuesday, Arizona senator John McCain defeated his GOP primary challenger Kelli Ward 52 percent to 39 percent, while Florida senator Marco Rubio defeated his GOP primary challenger Carlos Beruff 72 percent to 18 percent. Both Ward and Beruff styled themselves as Trumpist candidates in their races…

In this week's magazine, Steve Hayes has an excellent article about how Hillary Clinton's tenure at the State Department intersected with her husband's dealings at the Clinton Foundation. I highly suggest you read the whole thing, but here is the bottom line:

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Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 makes it illegal to sell or rent housing "because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status or national origin." The provision prohibits the disparate treatment of individuals because of race or any of the other forbidden grounds it identifies, as when a real…

I was exchanging emails the other day with a comrade-in-arms, and, the discussion of the matter at hand having been completed, she commented: "Thanks. We are all caught in the seventh circle of hell. I walk to the edge of my cliff here every morning and scream out over the river. The neighbors…

Donald Trump will be traveling to Mexico Wednesday to meet with that country's president. The meeting will occur just hours before Trump plans to give a speech on immigration in Phoenix. The Republican presidential nominee confirmed the trip, first reported by the Washington Post, in a tweet…

The low point for Marco Rubio came on March 15 when he was trounced in the Republican presidential primary in Florida, his home state, by Donald Trump, 46 to 27 percent. At that point, it appeared Rubio would finish his Senate career at the end of the year and leave politics behind.

In an op-ed at the Atlantic Council, former ambassador Frederic C. Hof condemns President Barack Obama's "passivity" during the bloody conflict in Syria, both on the battlefield and before the public eye, for the sake of preserving the Iran nuclear deal.

The FBI found about 30 emails involving Hillary Clinton that are potentially related to the Benghazi terrorist attack as part of its investigation of the former secretary of state's use of a private email server, the State Department said Tuesday.

Gene Wilder, the comedic actor and director who died Monday at the age of 83, had the qualities of a good character actor: an idiosyncratic voice, a mop of curly hair, and a familiarly quirky manner. But somehow, he became a star in a string of successful comedies in the 1970s and 1980s, including…

The Islamic State announced Tuesday that a senior official considered its second in command was killed in Syria, stripping the organization of its official public face.

A majority of registered Republican voters say that Donald Trump wasn't their party's best option for presidential nominee, a new poll from the Huffington Post and YouGov finds.

A top aide to President Obama forgave Iran's deployment of an advanced missile defense system around one of its nuclear facilities on Monday.

Executive editor Fred Barnes discussed Tuesday's tightest and most significant congressional primary races with the Wall Street Journal's Mary Kissel.

Reid Wilson reports at The Hill:

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with online editor Michael Warren on Rush Limbaugh and whether his defense of Trump has hurt his credibility.

On Tuesday, Bill Kristol joined MSNBC to talk about the 2016 elections and Hillary Clinton's weakness as a candidate.

A couple of years ago, THE WEEKLY STANDARD noted that American business interests and the media cover up China's human rights abuses. It contains this anecdote, which seems relevant in light of the recent and long overdue scrutiny of the Clinton Foundation:

Charter schools are essentially less regulated public schools, free for students and free from unions’ and districts' hiring requirements as well as most curricular constraints. They offer a popular alternative path to families in low-income districts where flagging reform efforts do less good than…

Powell's Books, which bills itself as the world's largest independent bookstore, is a Portland, Oregon, institution. (Though I've always been more partial to nearby Cameron's.) Its popularity among Portlanders ranks up there with bikes and beer. But now Powell's finds itself in direct conflict with…

Radio host Rush Limbaugh told a frustrated caller on his Monday show that he "never" took Donald Trump seriously on the Republican nominee's signature issue, immigration. The caller, identified as Rick in California, told the veteran conservative host about his irritation with Limbaugh's defense of…

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A division of the Department of Justice has released an instructional video for police officers across the country on how to interact with individuals who identify as transgendered. The video, which runs nearly 13 minutes, focuses on teaching cops the approved terminology with those they believe…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with managing editor Eric Felten on the last Beatles concert, 50 years later.

John Bills was a Chicago city hall flunky who took some $2 million in bribes to expand the Second City's infamous red-light traffic camera system. The Chicago Tribune broke the story in 2012, and the paper has the denouement on Monday, reporting on Bills's fate: A federal judge is sending him to…

Many Obamacare supporters have been taking solace in their belief that Aetna's recent decision to pull out of all but four government-run exchanges was a result not of Obamacare's slow-motion death spiral but of Aetna's playing politics with the Department of Justice, which has blocked the…

The invitation promised Omarosa, the much loved/hated star of "The Apprentice."

Republican vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence pledged to campaign for the support of "never Trump" voters who have stoutly opposed the top of the ticket, focusing attention toward the GOP and Democratic agendas and away from the candidates themselves in his pitch.

Recent polling finds that Democrats Russ Feingold (Wisconsin), Evan Bayh (Indiana), and Michael Bennet (Colorado) are all doing quite well in their respective Senate races versus Republicans Ron Johnson, Todd Young, and Darryl Glenn. But essentially all of that polling was done before Aetna…

During Secretary of State John Kerry's first official visit to Bangladesh, he met with top Bangladeshi government officials and held a press conference at the Edward M. Kennedy Center in Dhaka. In light of recent terror attacks in that country, Kerry addressed the problem of terrorism, including…

Over the weekend, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem at the beginning of an NFL preseason game. Predictably, this touched off a firestorm after Kaepernick explained at a press conference after the game that this was done to protest injustice in…

From Simon Oxenham's excellent weekly column in New Scientist comes word of another social psychology study that will undermine our faith in social psychology studies. We can never get enough of those.

Athens

The Foundation for Constitutional Government has released a new episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol.

The medical records that Hillary Clinton's camp have released thus far—a lone "medical statement," last summer—are thin enough to keep the vast right wing conspiracy distracted by four to eight years of pillow-propping, prat falls, and coughing fits. And for his part, Donald Trump's physician…

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, the consistent but hard-luck gunslinger who will probably have broken more bones than records by the time his career is finished, was injured again Thursday night. In a preseason game against the Seattle Seahawks, Romo had scrambled out of the pocket and was in…

As the ride-hailing outfit Uber has continued its assault on the established taxi industry—oftentimes with dubious legality—the company's CEO, Travis Kalanick, has often repaired to an essentially humanitarian argument to make his case for the company. Specifically, Kalanick says that Uber is great…

Trump campaign chief and Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon fired a woman on maternity leave who also suffered from multiple sclerosis. She sued in 2005, claiming her pregnancy and MS led to her unjust firing.

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Among the worst demographic groups for Donald Trump are college graduates and young people. A recent CNN poll, for instance, found that just 25 percent of voters under 30 say they're voting for the Republican nominee—far below the average of 38 percent GOP candidates have received with this group…

On Sunday, Donald Trump's vice presidential pick Mike Pence joined CNN's Jake Tapper to talk about Trump's apparent backtrack on immigration policy.

Republican vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence brushed off criticism that Trump's exhortation to "VOTE TRUMP!" in the wake of the murder Dwyane Wade's cousin, Nykea Aldridge, was offensive.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie did not acknowledge a "softening" in Donald Trump's stance on immigration Sunday.

It was 50 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught…wait, no, that's not right. What was 50 years ago on Monday was the last time the Beatles took to a stage to perform a concert. It might be argued that the January 1969 London rooftop jam session was the Beatles' last public performance, but their final…

Summer's Not Over (Yet)  

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Jonathan Last talks about the joys of living a little dangerously at Yellowstone National Park. Jeffrey Anderson comes by to explain the Obamacare death spiral, and Terry Eastland tells us how an obscure tax provision-the Johnson amendment-became one…

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In the summer of 2007, I was working on a story for THE WEEKLY STANDARD about the cult of celebrity chefs. As part of my reporting, I spent time with Michel Richard, who then ran two restaurants, the acclaimed Citronelle and the brasserie Central Michel Richard. It was inside the gastronomic temple…

It's always fun when you're winning. It seems like everything is going your way. If you're Nationals ace Max Scherzer going against the local rival Orioles, you get a groundball hit back at you on the mound and you field it between your legs. With your back facing the hitter. Here he is pulling off…

Editor William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, on Hillary's "alt-right" attack, the lingering Clinton scandals, and he answers the question "How does a neocon have fun in the summer of Trump?"

Phew! "Turkey sends tanks into Syria ...," CNN headlined on Thursday. "The goal is to crush ISIS." It's about time Turkey joined the war against Islamist terror. Some had suspected Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of having a soft spot for ISIS, even of letting his country be used as a supply…

They should have known better, those central bankers and policy-watchers who thought that Janet Yellen's speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday would mark a volte-face. Yellen, who skipped last year's meeting, came to Jackson Hole under pressure from important colleagues to commit to raising…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the week on why Trump's new campaign CEO overshadowed new revelations in the Hillary Clinton email scandal.

Former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz says in a new interview that might vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, elaborating on concerns he's expressed in recent weeks about the GOP presidential nominee's foreign policy.

Picking up where President Obama left off at the Democratic convention, Hillary Clinton praised the way Republicans used to do things during a speech Thursday, effectively distinguishing the GOP of the last two decades with the one currently led by Donald Trump.

Women's Equality Day comes but once a year. It's an opportunity to celebrate the brave women and acquiescent men who brought us the 19th Amendment, which was declared part of the Constitution on August 26, 1920.

As the Republican legislatures have tried to implement voter ID laws in recent years, the media have cried foul. Aside from the predictable charges of racism, the main argument is that such laws are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Kellyanne Conway, the veteran GOP pollster who as of last week is the campaign manager for Donald Trump, has built a career advising Republican candidates about ways to appeal to women voters. Conway is frequently cited as an expert on the political attitudes and opinions of women. Her firm, The…

The phrase "Lock her up" has become a common chant at Donald Trump campaign rallies when the Republican nominee talks about his opponent Hillary Clinton, but generally Trump and other speakers have tried to redirect supporters to "beat her" in November.

Janet Yellen has given her speech and her words, as parsed by CNN/Money, indicate that, "a rate hike this year is still on the table."

The Guardian reports:

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There has been a lot of speculation in recent days about whether Donald Trump is profoundly changing his position on immigration. On Wednesday night in Jackson, Mississippi, he sure didn't sound like it.

"Hello, I'm looking for the Hirst exhibit?"

As Obamacare continues to face numerous setbacks, Tennessee's insurance commissioner declared on Tuesday that its exchange was "very near collapse" after she approved several large premium hikes to keep it in business.

Washington Free Beacon editor Matthew Continetti joined PBS NewsHour Thursday to discuss the alt-right, an online-based movement of racist and bigoted provocateurs who have largely rallied around the candidacy of Donald Trump. In the segment Continetti, who is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY…

You probably saw the big scoop last week from the Associated Press (Stephen Hayes writes about it elsewhere in this issue). As the AP reported, “At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with [Hillary] Clinton while she led the State Department…

As Bill Clinton entered the final year of his presidency, his aides put together a legacy-building trip to South Asia—the first visit to the region by a U.S. president since Jimmy Carter's in 1978. Early drafts of the itinerary featured a notable exclusion: The president would visit India, an…

Hillary Clinton has built-in advantages in the presidential race. The media's liberal bias that benefits her campaign has been on display for months. After her coast-to-coast fundraising whirl last week, Clinton's war chest is overflowing. She "is pushing the boundaries of fundraising further than…

Just as Americans are sometimes mystified by European enthusiasm for certain of our countrymen—Jerry Lewis/France, David Hasselhoff/Germany, etc.—the reverse can be true as well. Case in point: the immense popularity in America of the BBC television series Yes Minister (1980-84) and Yes, Prime…

Unless I overlooked copies of Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices—or Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal—No Child Left Alone has surely been the most anxiety-producing read at the beach this summer. While my fellow vacationers splashed through the mass-market fiction list, I dove beneath the deep waves…

A tip of The Scrapbook homburg to the University of Chicago, which has let its incoming freshmen know that they should expect an intellectual climate as bracing and exhilarating as the local winters. No special-snowflake treatment. The letter from the dean of students (John Ellison) to the Class of…

On April 15, 1865, the painter Rubens Peale received “sad news of the murder of President Lincoln.” On April 23, Peale was afforded “a fine opportunity of viewing the corpse and decorations of the hall, which was totally covered with black cloth except the statue & portraits of General Washington &…

Summer ends with Donald Trump having spent the year’s hottest months pursuing evangelical voters by advocating repeal of the so-called Johnson amendment. His pursuit of evangelicals is understandable: Trump can't win the White House without them—lots and lots of them. But the Johnson amendment?

IN HIS FINE ADDRESS to Congress, President Bush committed America to "our war on terror." But what should we call this war and how should we think of it? Already the Pentagon’s initial name for the war, "Operation Infinite Justice," has been discarded. That unfortunate moniker called to mind a…

The Consumer Financial Pro­tection Bureau just celebrated its fifth anniversary by releasing an outline for new debt collection rules that will encourage consumers to avoid paying their debts.

Many of our finest poets—think of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound—are also known as major critics, but in Susan Howe's case, it has always been difficult to separate the two practices. My Emily Dickinson (1985), the book that first brought Howe wide attention, is at once revisionary scholarship, careful…

"At the beginning of the 21st century," Edward Mendelson writes in his entry on W. H. Auden in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "many readers thought it not implausible to judge his work the greatest body of poetry in English of the previous hundred years or more." Even allowing for a…

In an interview last week for his new book The Iran Wars, Jay Solomon of the Wall Street Journal told Andrea Mitchell that Iran in 2013 had threatened to pull out of nuclear talks if the United States hit Bashar al-Assad’s forces over the Syrian dictator's use of chemical weapons. The Obama…

In the first pages of his account of the Obama administration's foreign policy, Derek Chollet likens Barack Obama to Warren Buffett. Just as the renowned businessman is a "proudly pragmatic value investor" who pays little mind to "the whims of the moment" and focuses on "solid investments," Obama…

The provocative subtitle of this new biography suggests that the author is going to explore the racier aspects of his subject’s life. He does not disappoint: Franz Liszt's flamboyant playing style and unconventional relationships represent a gold mine of sensationalistic material, and this book…

The photo posted on Akie Abe’s Facebook account on August 22, showing her paying her respects at the USS Arizona Memorial to the victims of the attack on Pearl Harbor, is worth far more than the proverbial thousand words. This was the first visit to the site by the wife of a Japanese prime…

There’s a new bank-robber movie that's good enough to survive what may be the worst title in recent memory: Hell or High Water, a name that evokes precisely nothing about the picture even though it refers to a throwaway line spoken in its third act. At least, back in the day, when Hollywood came up…

Throughout this tortuous presidential campaign, ­Donald Trump has regularly embarrassed ­Republicans with his inability to articulate routine conservative ­positions on a wide variety of public policies. His most enthusiastic supporters have zealously defended him regardless. The reason can be…

This book is a knockout, a severe blow to the brain and to the gut, having arrived at a time when Europeans and Americans have been thinking hard about the social and economic forces that can unhinge republics. Safeguarding the vulnerable structures that allow large and complex societies to live…

It was on Halloween night that I first realized there was a problem. My three children—dressed as Darth Vader, a pirate fairy, and Tinker Bell—were making their way down Lee Street, in Old Town Alexandria, Va. The houses were decked with spider webs and all manner of spooky, expensive-looking…

I spent a couple weeks this summer museum-hopping. Art museums, mostly, and while I don’t know much about painting or sculpture, I know what I like, and I know what I don't like, and I don't like people who go museum-hopping. Present company excluded.

The first year of the Obama administration, 3,278 people in the United States died of heroin overdoses. By 2014 (the most recent year for which there are statistics), that number had more than tripled, with 10,574 heroin deaths. Add to heroin the abuse of narcotic painkillers (analgesics such as…

Donald Trump’s overheated rhetoric has made immigration a central issue of this election. There is now a vigorous debate over what to do with America's roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants. Neither conservatives nor liberals, however, have paid much attention to the need for reforming legal…

With Aetna’s announcement that it is pulling out of most government-run exchanges, Obamacare's death spiral has begun to accelerate. Few but the sickest or most heavily subsidized people want anything to do with the (inaptly named) Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's high-priced,…

In the past week, Donald Trump has pivoted, as they say, to try to appeal to African-American voters. He’s convinced he can win them over. Indeed, he claims his policies as president will be so transformative that, "At the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95 percent of the…

Stephen Bannon, the new CEO of the Donald Trump presidential campaign who was recently the chairman of Breitbart News, was accused of physically attacking his wife. The New York Post has the scoop:

Hillary Clinton hasn't held a press conference since early December, an extended vacation from reporters that has created annoyance and even resentment in the media. Sure, she's granted interviews—she did one by phone with CNN's Anderson Cooper just Wednesday night—but she hasn't made herself…

A Canadian who went abroad for terrorist training maintained contact with terrorists in Iran while planning an attack at home, according to a recently released report from the Canadian government.

There's an old joke that goes "for sale–French rifle, never fired and only dropped once." It comes from an ugly old stereotype about the French military, one of white flags, hands thrust aloft, tails tucked in retreat. There's nothing wrong with good natured ribbing between military forces (just…

As the safe space-trigger warning-microagression movement possesses universities across the country, a number of educators remain hopeful that students still long for a challenging education at an institution that allows them to freely exchange ideas.

A piece of California legislation, unanimously approved by the state assembly and just waiting for the governor's pen, would relax the definition of rape to include any non-consensual sexual contact.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton implied there is a difference between her family's foundation accepting foreign donations during her cabinet tenure and doing the same during her potential presidency, saying the latter would present "unique circumstances" absent during her time as the…

Literary Editor Philip Terzian and Michael Graham discuss the news that reading can prolong your life, and three novels you should read.

The players in this election season are, it seems, not interested in talking about the deficit. Too much of a downer. Still, when the giddy days and nights of campaigning are done and the cold grey dawn of governing breaks, someone is going to have to face the facts. Namely, that spending is…

This is not another glowing review of the universally-praised Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance's first-hand account of the problems facing the white working-class in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Not because I don't like the memoir—along with apparently everyone else who has read it, I found the memoir…

As of Wednesday night, these are the presidential candidates voters will choose from on Minnesota's ballot in November:

The dean of students at the University of Chicago, John Ellison, has laid out his university's commitment to free expression and deliberate debate in his yearly letter to the incoming freshman—sorry, "first year"—class. Ellison wrote, "Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support…

CNN released a new poll Wednesday evening showing John McCain leading Kelli Ward in the August 30 Arizona Senate primary by 26 points (55 percent to 29 percent).

The House of Representatives is currently considering legislation passed by the Senate that would change the law of foreign sovereign immunity in order to allow the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 attackers were citizens, for its supposed culpability.…

The two paintings—side-by-side Adam and Eve panels, a diptych in delicious Northern Renaissance detail—went to Hitler's chief underling, the fat philistine and stolen-art hoarder Hermann Göring, in 1940. And now, according to a California District Court decision, they'll stay in a Pasadena's Norton…

In an iconic scene in Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman's character, Mia, overdoses on heroin and is revived by the administration of an adrenaline injection to the heart.

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The refrain from Donald Trump backers of late is that the polls are systematically underrepresenting them, thus making it seem like the real estate mogul is behind Hillary Clinton when he is in fact ahead. What to make of this?

What I was trying emphasize with all the poll talk Wednesday is that this race is over. There is no coming back from where Trump is now. A candidate with high-favorables and a semi-competent campaign—say, Bob Dole—couldn't do it. A conspiracy-obsessed narcissist who is hated by 60 percent of the…

Donald Trump unleashed a new populist messenger on Wednesday night who declared Americans can defeat the establishment and the media just as the British people did in voting to leave the European Union.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) pledged early this year that it was a new day in Washington, D.C. The transit agency pledged that the metro system would put safety and customer service first. D.C. commuters were largely skeptical that much would change besides rhetoric.…

Strange things are afoot at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency housed within the Department of the Interior tasked with managing the nation's vast swaths of publicly held land.

Contemporary campus gospel tells us that "all white people are racist." It's more or less the collective motto of a growing subset of race-focused consulting groups, propped up by popular progressive social science.

So which is it? Hillary Clinton, on the stump, telling voters she cares about the little guy, or Hillary Clinton at an intimate gathering that charges $50,000 per plate? As a subhed in Wednesday's Washington Post put it, "High-dollar fundraisers contrast with promise to help middle class."

Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted the following:

Are you enjoying the new Trump pivot? Like President Obama's pivot to the economy—coming soon to a theater near you since the spring of 2009—Donald Trump has been just about to pivot to the general election since the evening he wrapped up the nomination in Indiana. And yet, there's always a shiny…

A new revelation about former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson's platform is, unfortunately, part of a continuing series, after he inexplicably came out against religious liberty and former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld expressed dubious sentiments about the Second Amendment.

People with certain kinds of allergies carry the device with them. Always. It means the difference between, say, a bee sting being merely a painful nuisance and death from anaphylactic shock. So the market for what is called an "EpiPen" is pretty much guaranteed. If you are someone with one of…

Sir Antony Jay has died at age 86. Jay is best known as the co-writer, along with Jonathan Lynn, of the beloved television shows Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. To be honest, I knew next to nothing about Jay's life prior to his death, and to remedy that I recommend the Telegraph's fine…

Did you know this year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death? Theater-rats have been told this a hundred times by now, but it bears reconsidering. In the course of four centuries, audiences have remained entranced by his work—the same plots, characters, and dialogue—unchanged, ever since.

"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" was President Barack Obama's signature catchphrase he used to sell the Affordable Care Act to the American people. Now Obamacare's flagship website, healthcare.gov, no longer even addresses the issue.

Recently, there's been renewed interest in reviving the "public option." Loosely, the public option is a policy proposal to create a giant government-run health insurer that would compete with private insurers. The rationale behind it is that a publicly run insurance company would be able to…

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Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson recently ruffled professorial feathers with an impassioned anti-academic screed. His call for "destructive" reforms in higher education smacks of Freudian slippage. (Good ideas, according to the ruling tech paradigm, are "disruptive"—their "destructive" effects only…

Three GOP members of Louisiana's congressional delegation are being accused of hypocrisy for advocating a federal disaster declaration in their home state. But there's nothing to the charge when considering how they've approached other relief efforts in the past.

A new poll of likely voters in Utah shows Republican Donald Trump with a 15-point lead over his next closest competitor, Democrat Hillary Clinton. But the GOP nominee has only a plurality of support in a field that includes third party and independent candidates, and he remains very unpopular in…

In his most recent newsletter, Jonah Goldberg has a very interesting discussion of "corruption" and the ways in which we're confused about the meaning of that term. (By the way, Jonah's newsletter, "G-File," is spectacularly good. He's a born newsletterist (is that a word?). And you should…

A majority of the non-governmental meetings Hillary Clinton made while Secretary of State were with Clinton Foundation donors, according to an Associated Press report—the first to assess the proportion of Clinton's pay-for-play.

President Barack Obama casually pressured the Republican-controlled Congress to address the medium- and long-term financial needs of flood-ravaged Louisiana as they arise Tuesday, as GOP members of the state's congressional delegation stood behind him.

The State Department refused to say whether it sent Iran $1.3 billion in January, claiming that they were obligated to withhold information about the financial transaction due to confidentiality.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with deputy online editor Chris Deaton on the continuation of Hillary's email scandal.

On Wednesday, WEEKLY STANDARD senior writer Stephen F. Hayes joined Fox News to talk about the latest revelations about the connection between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton's State Department.

Democrats changed their party platform this year to call explicitly for repealing the Hyde amendment, a longstanding and popular budget measure that prohibits federal funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients except in rare circumstances. Taxpayer-funding of abortion is so unpopular that even…

"Federal Transgender Bathroom Access Guidelines Blocked by Judge" is the headline atop a New York Times story. Here is how the case came to be, where it stands now, and why it is important:

The Washington Post is excited by a new poll of economists got up by the National Association for Business Economics. It shows, says the Post, "overwhelming support" for Hillary Clinton. "Overwhelming" might be a slight exaggeration on the Post's part—Clinton had 55 percent support, meaning that 45…

The novelist Roger L. Simon is the author of, among other works, the Moses Wine crime novel series, and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter for his screenplay of Enemies: A Love Story, the 1989 movie based on an Isaac Bashevis Singer novel. Simon was formerly the CEO of Pajama Media and now serves as…

As you've heard, it's healthy to exercise, socialize, volunteer and get enough sleep, to the point of extending your life. Now a new study indicates that reading books can keep you alive longer as well. So if that's your inclination in the heat of August and you have time at a beach or beside a…

Over the weekend, a Navy machinist, Kristian Saucier, faced a federal judge for taking six photos of the interior of a nuclear submarine. Even though such information is considered the lowest level of classified information, he did not get off lightly:

With President Obama's plans for improving the lives of each one of us stalled by a recalcitrant, mean-spirited Republican congress, liberals and progressives are concentrating on using the tools available on the local level to enrich our lives. None more determined than Mayor Bill de Blasio, who…

Susan was out of town this weekend, so I did what everyone does when his wife's away—scheduled dinners with friends Friday and Saturday nights, and got lunch Saturday at our local Chinese restaurant. And I was glad I did, because here's the fortune that came in my (complimentary!) fortune cookie…

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Coming off a terrible July, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is clinging to a narrow lead over her primary challenger. The former Democratic National Committee's chief faces her primary challenge on August 30.

It's a truth universally acknowledged that laws requiring voters to show some form of identification have only one purpose: to suppress minority turnout and help the Republican party. The official line, after all, is that there has…

If you want to see basketball played brilliantly, watch a video of the second quarter of the U.S.-Serbia game. It was the gold medal game and Serbia, having come close to beating the Americans earlier in the Olympics, was anything but a pushover.

Jazz musicians, like their colleagues in the other performing arts, are not exactly known for being politically conservative. Hear of a jazz project with political overtones, and you can be forgiven for expecting that it will have a stridently left-wing "message."

The State Department reissued a travel warning Monday that emphasized the risks facing U.S. citizens in Iran.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with online editor Michael Warren on the Clinton Foundation's future should Hillary win the election this fall.

A federal judge's ruling that Hillary Clinton must give written testimony to a group suing for information about her use of private email was timed in such a way that the former secretary of state will likely be forced to respond before Election Day, barring unforeseen snags in the process.

In an article Monday in the New York Sun, Claudia Rosett may have found one of the missing links in the Obama administration's Iran ransom story.

The top spokesman for the Republican National Committee defended Donald Trump's outreach and appeal to black voters, citing the color-blind membership policy of the GOP nominee's swanky South Florida Mar-a-Lago golf club.

Information buried in an internal State Department review has compounded allegations that the Department intentionally deleted an exchange about secret talks between the United States and Iran from a press briefing video, Fox News reports.

Federal agencies can't agree on what rape is. According to a July report from the Government Accountability Office, this interagency confusion misleads the American public. The report, requested by Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, revealed vast differences in how the Departments of Education,…

Monmouth University released a new poll Monday reminding Republicans that they might easily be winning the 2016 presidential race if they had nominated a natural-born citizen over the age of 35 who is not Donald Trump.

Secretary of State John Kerry, in Nairobi, Kenya for discussions on regional security and counterterrorism issues, made a "birther" joke about President Obama during a joint appearance with the Kenyan foreign minister Monday.

A federal judge leaned on the State Department Monday to speed up the processing of nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed emails discovered by the FBI in its probe of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The crown prince of Bahrain attempted to arrange a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009 by using his connections to the Clinton Foundation. That's according to newly released emails between Clinton's State Department aide Huma Abedin and former Bill Clinton aide Doug Band, who…

The problem with Democrats' approach to tax reform is that they want to increase taxes, and their plans would generally stymie growth. The problem with Republicans' approach to tax reform is that their plans, while pro-growth, too often neglect Main Street Americans and too often aren't fiscally…

A former CIA operative and obscure Capitol Hill staffer by the name of Evan McMullin has begun a longshot conservative bid against Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein.

Mexico has a serious obesity problem, with seventy percent of adults and thirty percent of children overweight or obese. Indeed, Mexico recently surpassed the United States to become the fattest major country in the world. We don't win anymore!

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Former CIA and NSA honcho Michael Hayden said Sunday that he will not be voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Andrew Ferguson stops by to talk about a new biography of Paul McCartney; and Ethan Epstein discusses what's happened to the issue of immigration in the age of Trump.

On Face the Nation Sunday morning on CBS, longtime Trump adviser and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions discussed the most current iteration of the Trump immigration platform with host John Dickerson.

My fortune cookie

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At times of intense controversy, it can be a valuable exercise to turn to the works of the past not to escape the present but instead to gain a truer view of it. It is in this spirit that Edmund Burke's "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol" offers a rewarding rereading.

Editor William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast on the "new," humble, huggable Donald Trump; Manafort's force out; President "Where's Waldo?" Obama; and the Ryan Lochte scandal.

How on earth does Angela Merkel think she is going to get re-elected?

"Let Reagan be Reagan" conservatives cried when their champion made his first run for the White House, and it turned out to be good advice. "Let Trump be Trump," cries none other than Donald Trump himself, who has decided to replace the team of professional campaign advisers who want him to be…

Lobbying firms with ties to the campaigns of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are being investigated by the Department of Justice for potential violations of foreign agent registration statutes and connections to corruption in Ukraine.

The Obama administration is refusing to provide documents to lawmakers seeking details about a controversial $400 million cash payment the U.S. made to Iran in January, according to exchanges viewed exclusively by THE WEEKLY STANDARD and congressional sources.

Amid mounting criticism in the media, the White House announced Friday afternoon that President Obama would visit flood-ravaged Louisiana next Tuesday.

Leaders in the health sector from Washington state and Colorado, where marijuana's recreational use is widespread and often ineffectively regulated, know enough by now to take a step back and consider the ill effects. They presented findings and concerns on the health effects of cannabis Thursday…

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday night that he has no recollection of a dinner conversation in which he allegedly advised Hillary Clinton to use private email for transmitting non-sensitive information. According to a forthcoming book by liberal journalist Joe Conason obtained…

After the breakup, who gets to keep the gold medals? That's the question some sports fans are asking themselves after a European Union website included British medals in a table that boasted of the EU besting both the United States and China in the Olympics medal count.

Aetna announced this week that it will no longer be providing Affordable Care Act "marketplace" insurance plans in nearly a dozen states, including Arizona. Aetna joins other insurers, including Humana, UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Arizona, and Health Net in dropping Obamacare…

In a press release, Los Angeles mayor and Hillary Clinton supporter Eric Garcetti announced a partnership with the American Institute of Graphic Arts and other non-profits to "launch [a] targeted 'get out the vote' initiative featuring Edward James Olmos."

Donald Trump's first television ad of the general election, released Friday, hits Hillary Clinton for her stance on border security and immigration.

Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort has resigned. The news, first reported by the Washington Post, was confirmed by a statement Friday morning from the Republican nominee.

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They're having a close-out sale at the Clinton Foundation. The New York Times reports:

Donald Trump looks set to lose the presidential election to Hillary Clinton by a fair margin. But what about Congress?

Paul Manafort, the Republican campaign veteran who is chairman for Donald Trump's White House bid, was reportedly engaged in a secret effort to influence Americans on behalf of the reigning pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. The Associated Press has the story:

A recent study from the Los Angeles Times and the American Enterprise Institute shows that even the poor have become leerier about Washington's efforts to lift them from hardship.

The State Department admitted Thursday that a controversial $400 million payment the United States made to Iran in January was used as "leverage" in the release of American hostages.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on whether the House GOP majority is at risk.

George Soros's philanthropy network sought to obscure its close coordination with a liberal Jewish advocacy group connected to the Obama administration and to campaigns designed to increase pressure on Israel and bolster the U.S.-Iranian relationship, newly leaked documents show.

Perhaps not since Louis Réard introduced the first bikini to Paris in 1946 has beachwear been such a heated topic in France. The controversy began last week, when a women's group from Marseilles advertised a "burkini day" at a local waterpark. The event, which would have banned men over the age of…

The case of a clash between Uber, the city of Seattle, and labor unions has put a new spin on an old saying: If you can't beat 'em, make them join you.

The Hillary Clinton campaign has taken notice of Donald Trump's newest hire, blasting the Republican for tapping former Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon as the campaign's CEO. Here's an excerpt from a Clinton fundraising email sent Thursday morning:

With less than three months to go until Election Day, Donald Trump's campaign has announced that it will finally start running television ads. However, the ad buys so far are modest and limited to a few swing states, reports Politico:

Dansby Swanson went 2-for-4 last night. OK, so who is Swanson, and why am I writing about him?

The chief of Amtrak's police division, Polly Hanson, is under investigation for violating conflict of interest rules and committing fraud in hiring her boyfriend's firm for a government-funded counterterrorism contract. For a million-dollar contract on the railroad's RAILSAFE program, she chose ABS…

I received an email this morning from Michael Lieber, the former GOP city captain for Bay Village, Ohio, who resigned that post last month to protest Donald Trump's nomination as the presidential candidate for the Republican party. Because Lieber says concisely and eloquently what so many others…

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Steven Rattner, a New York Times columnist who was also the Obama administration's "auto czar," has a piece out Thursday morning defending the auto bailout. This being the New York Times, the piece can't just make an argument about the bailout: It also has to serve as a rebuke of Donald Trump. And…

I admire Tom Edsall a ton. Like Robert Putnam and Phil Longman, he's smart and honest and interesting and you don't have to be a fellow-traveler to profit from reading him.

Mike Pence said Wednesday that Twitter doesn't "matter a hill of beans" in shaping voters' preferences for the presidential candidates, even as the man for whom he's campaigning has used the social media utility to dictate news cycles—often to his detriment—since entering the race last year.

As George Costanza once said, it's not a lie if you believe it. He might have said the same of political spin. It's not clear whether Michael Cohen, an executive vice president with the Trump Organization and a surrogate for the Donald Trump campaign, believes his latest spin on the increasingly…

The U.S. delayed delivering a controversial $400 million payment to Iran until American hostages held there were "wheels up," the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Over the last three years of the Syrian Civil War, Hezbollah has increasingly operated as a regular army rather than in its traditional, decades-long role as a guerrilla force. The Shiite group has operated Syrian tanks and artillery, jeeps with recoilless rifles, and is even rumored to have…

For proof positive that nobody has fun anymore, look no further than this instance of frat shaming out of New Hampshire.

With bureaucrats like this, Vladimir Putin doesn't need friends.

In the New York Times's recent report on Trump aide Paul Manafort's possibly illegal payoffs from pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, there's this curious detail:

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with online editor Michael Warren on Donald Trump's pivot... to more Trump.

Eleven weeks before the general election, with polls showing Donald Trump staring at a potential electoral rout, the New York businessman decisively ended speculation that he would "pivot" to end the race a more "presidential" candidate by naming Stephen Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News, as the…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD editor Bill Kristol lamented the fall of Breitbart News Wednesday in the wake of Breitbart chairman Stephen Bannon's appointment as chief executive for the Trump campaign.

On Monday, I wrote about questions surrounding the Trump campaign's finances. Specifically, a Huffington Post report was circulating noting that the topline FEC numbers suggested that the Trump campaign burned through $63 million last month. I contacted the Trump campaign, which offered no comment…

Earlier this year, Michael Warren wrote about Paul Manafort's involvement with the Trump campaign. From the outset, there were questions about his lobbying for foreign strongmen, particularly his involvement with Viktor Yanukovych and Russian interests in Ukraine. "Manafort was instrumental in…

Tuesday night on CNN's Erin Burnett Out Front, editor William Kristol discussed the news that Donald Trump refuses to pivot towards a traditional presidential campaign.

The chairman of the right-wing news and opinion website Breitbart is now effectively in charge of the Donald Trump presidential campaign. The Wall Street Journal broke the news early Wednesday about the Trump campaign's shakeup:

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So there is a reason for countries to host North Korean embassies after all. Sure, rather than the spade work of actual diplomacy, North Korea's "diplomats" use their embassies to export counterfeit cash, go on illegal shopping sprees for their leader, and issue terrifying threats against…

On CNN's Erin Burnett Out Front, editor William Kristol discussed Hillary Clinton's email scandal and how it has hurt her campaign.

John McLaughlin was a Jesuit priest, unsuccessful Senate candidate in Rhode Island, and White House aide to Richard Nixon. But he won't be remembered for any of that because he did something a lot bigger. He changed TV political commentary and made it faster, funnier, and far more watchable—in…

The FBI has sent investigative materials into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server to Capitol Hill, including notes from the Bureau's interview with Clinton, it was reported Tuesday.

A professor who penned an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing for the Obama administration's $400 million payment to Iran did not disclose his ties to a group that paid experts to advocate for the Iran nuclear deal in the public sphere, the Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday.

Clinton ally and Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane was forced to resign from her post Tuesday after a jury found her guilty of nine criminal offenses.

A small evangelical college in Oklahoma has become the first school to sue the federal government for its overbearing Title IX enforcement—possibly paving the way for others. Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Bartlesville has joined an existing lawsuit against the federal Department of Education…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on his advice for the Trump campaign.

The Democratic candidate for Senate in the battleground state of New Hampshire declined to say Hillary Clinton was honest and trustworthy Monday morning after being asked three separate times.

We mourn those closest to us when they die: parents, relatives, family, friends. When a leader or athlete dies, an obituary is good; it's something to share.

Did Hillary Clinton commit perjury at a congressional hearing about the Benghazi attack? That's what two House Republican committee chairmen are asking the Justice Department to investigate. On Monday, House Oversight chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah and House Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte of…

On Monday, Andrew Ferguson wrote on the government's feeble and insulting attempt to explain why insurance premiums were rising precipitously under Obamacare, contrary to what was promised. This is just scratching the surface of Obamacare's current woes.

The level of fury expressed by Beijing over South Korea's recently announced decision to deploy the U.S. Army's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) seems to have caught some in Seoul off guard. China's official mouthpiece, Xinhua, even carried an August 13 report suggesting that…

Less than two months after Iran received $400 million in foreign currency in January, the world's top state sponsor of terror acquired another $1.3 billion in cash from the United States, based on statements of U.S. government officials.

I've been waiting for a book like this for a while now.

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The Defense Department has transferred 15 detainees—12 Yemenis and 3 Afghan citizens—from Guantanamo to the United Arab Emirates. The Pentagon's web page says nothing about the risks the detainees pose beyond the fact that the transfers supposedly "took place consistent with appropriate security…

Coming into Rio, few people expected 31-year-old Michael Phelps, swimming in his fifth Olympics, to become the most decorated swimmer in this year's games. With the swimming competition now completed, however, that's exactly what transpired. Phelps finished with five gold medals (the most of any…

The Islamic Republic of Iran does not recognize the independence of the Republic of Kosovo. While the Balkan state of some 1.8 million people is 80 percent Muslim, few among them are Shia, save for some spiritual Sufis whose variety of Shiism is extremely heterodox when compared with Tehran's…

Donald Trump used to love the polls, until the polls weren't useful anymore. Now he's is taking matters into his own hands by conducting a poll of his own. Trump's campaign emailed his supporters earlier Monday, saying that he is now facing two opponents: Hillary Clinton and the media.

In the latest episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol, University of Virginia professor Paul Cantor joins Kristol to talk about his recommended reading list. Cantor includes several writers through the ages, both well and lesser known, who might appeal to lovers of liberty and classical…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Donald Trump's foreign policy speech Monday in Youngstown, Ohio.

Donald Trump delivered a strong speech Monday on thwarting terrorists and crushing ISIS while cleverly disguising it as an address on national security policy.

Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger said Monday that Donald Trump should look into his campaign's reported ties to the Kremlin and pro-Putin figures in Ukraine.

I guess all the flacks in the vast Obama administration public relations apparatus are at the beach. What else would explain this inelegant quote from Robert Pear's story today in the New York Times?

Indiana Senate hopeful Evan Bayh has identified himself repeatedly in public records as a Washingtonian, according to a report, a revelation that fueled charges of opportunism from his critics Monday.

It is national news, reported with an urgency bordering on hysterical when

Puerto Rico won its first Olympic gold medal Saturday when Monica Puig defeated Angelique Kerber to take the top prize in women's singles in tennis. Puerto Ricans on the island and off were ecstatic—like Hamilton author Lin-Manuel Miranda, who celebrated in a series of tweets—as Puig joined Puerto…

My friend Jay Cost (a fellow non-fan of the current Republican nomination system) outlines a scenario in which Donald Trump could lose to Hillary Clinton by an electoral-vote tally of 396 to 142. This is certainly possible, if the Trump campaign goes into a complete tailspin. But if Trump gets out…

At The Huffington Post, Bob Burnett reports that Donald Trump raised a sizable amount of money last month:

Police were called to a meeting of the Multnomah County, Oregon, Democrats late last week. According to the Oregonian, a "scuffle" broke out when a handful of Bernie Sanders supporters, led by one Leigh LaFleur (a prominent Wiccan supporter of the Vermont senator) disrupted the meeting by shouting.…

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The national polls paint a grim portrait for the Donald Trump campaign. The current Real Clear Politics average of the two-way polls shows Hillary Clinton with a commanding 6.8 percent lead. While there is still plenty of time left in the campaign, it is difficult to overcome such a large deficit…

Poland's government has passed a law, upheld by its constitutional court, "that significantly limits the rights of people whose property in Warsaw was seized during or after World War II, and their descendants, to apply for restitution," according to the New York Times. The law sets up hurdles…

Trump campaign manager Paul Manfort begged credulity earlier Sunday, when he told CNN's Jake Tapper that he was unaware of an offensive statement made by Carl Paladino, the real estate developer and failed politician who serves as co-chair of Trump's New York campaign. (Paladino lost the New York…

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Matt Labash recounts the Libertarian convention and the concomitant comic convention, while Jeffrey Anderson discusses what happened to the issues in the presidential race.

Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer in the Middle East and South Asia, presented himself to frustrated Americans Sunday as a fresh-faced unifier with foreign policy experience.

At the Beach (cont.)

Sturgis, S.D.

The New York Times's Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns have a revealing look at the tumult behind the scenes in the Donald Trump campaign. The Republican nominee for president has been under seige, they report, from advisors and aides urging Trump to remain on message and focused on winning the…

A correspondent calls to my attention a remarkable op-ed in the Plain Dealer in Cleveland by Phil Van Treuren, a Republican member of the Amherst City Council in Lorain County, Ohio.

Editor William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast on the surprising reason why he can't vote for Hillary Clinton; Is it cut-and-run time for GOP on Trump campaign?; And the songs Bill would add to Obama's summer playlist.

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Seventeen-year-old ISIS volunteer Kadiza Sultana was killed by a Russian bombing strike in Syria, according to the BBC. One extraordinary thing about her is that she was already, at her age, a widow: The ISIS fighter she had married (or been married off to) had lately been killed in action. What…

Earlier this week both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton revealed the broad outlines of their plans for the American economy. Trump aims to accelerate growth, Clinton to redistribute the economic pie. Both have serious political problems. The Donald managed to trump his own economic plan with what…

The co-chairman of Donald Trump's New York campaign said Friday that Khizr Khan, the father of a slain Muslim-American solider, "doesn't deserve" the title of a Gold Star parent.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is "discrediting conservatism." That's what Bill Kristol said Friday on CNN about the New York businessman and reality-TV star.

In the Wall Street Journal, a physician tells us that

For months, Donald Trump has been talking about how the political system in the United States is "rigged." Now his campaign is looking for "election observers" to prevent "Crooked Hillary Clinton" from "rigging the election" in November.

The fate of Harvard's Fox Club will fall, for now, on the side of tradition. Thursday morning, a vote to authorize the continued election of female members narrowly failed.

Michael Phelps does not dominate or even contest every swimming discipline in international competition. The butterfly is his most famous stroke and individual race, and he has routinely cleaned up in freestyle. But he has only medaled in backstroke once. That was 10 years ago. And in no year has…

Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump in the battleground states of Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado, according to four NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls released Friday.

Last week, Josh Rogin reported for the Washington Post that President Obama will seek a United Nations Security Council resolution that, at the very least, calls for an end to nuclear testing. According to Rogin, the president's diplomatic gambit is to occur in September—around the 20th anniversary…

A group of more than 70 former Republican officeholders and national committee staff and officers have penned a letter to RNC chair Reince Priebus urging him to stop spending party money to boost Trump's presidential campaign and instead focus on vulnerable House and Senate seats. Politico has the…

In an economic address delivered in Michigan this week, Hillary Clinton tore into Donald Trump. No surprise there, of course. But what is notable is precisely what Clinton excoriated her Republican opponent for: Per Hillary, Trump is just too darn negative about the current state of the country.

When Evan McMullin was growing up just outside of Seattle, he wanted to be a filmmaker. He and his friends would film their own movies around the neighborhood and edit them on his VCR. “Some of them were pretty good," he says.

In the wake of the Democratic convention, some foot-in-mouth comments by Donald Trump, and a poll bounce for Hillary Clinton, much of the political class has decided that the presidential race is all but over. But across most of America, voters are at least as apt to be swayed by issues as by a…

This wonderfully perceptive memoir follows Matthew Gilbert’s transformation during his first year as a reluctant dog owner. A neurotic, death-obsessed, and socially uncomfortable television critic for the Boston Globe, Gilbert describes his evolution into a more open-hearted, playful person, thanks…

In This Old Man, his recent collection of autobiographical and critical writings, Roger Angell fondly recalls how his boyhood was shaped by the fabled Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

In case you haven’t already noticed the double-date at the bottom of the page, just a heads-up that this is a combined issue of The Weekly Standard. We'll be off next week to take the waters. But many of our colleagues will be hard at work as usual. We're referring in part to our indefatigable team…

The boss has added some great new attractions at conversations­withbillkristol.org (hosted by the Foundation for Constitutional Government). There's a new conversation with Spencer Abraham (former U.S. senator from Michigan, secretary of ­energy) and our very own Jay Cost on the state of the 2016…

The Weekly Standard is hiring an assistant literary editor. This is a full-time clerical/administrative post with editorial and production duties and the opportunity to ­assist in the composition of the Books & Arts section. The ideal applicant will be interested in promotion and social media.…

As Trump speeches go, his address to the Detroit Economic Club was a good one. Donald Trump cleared the low bar of actually staying focused on what is mostly a pro-growth economic policy. But for a speech on economics, it was also remarkable for what it didn't say. There was absolutely nothing…

It was delightful, as odysseys go, and I wouldn't mind doing it again .  .  . and again.

Last year I had an annoying medical issue that cost me several thousand dollars to explore. I say “explore" because the problem never got solved, at least not by the two physicians I originally consulted. Nonetheless, I had to pay for the relief that I sought, but never got. The biggest expense was…

Cincinnati

Back in 1975, Richard Wilbur—probably the greatest translator of poetry into English that America has ever known—published a pair of rhyming riddles he had translated from the Latin of a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon monk named St. Aldhelm. Practitioners of formal poetry are always lured by Latin,…

When it comes to irresponsible rhetoric, the media have long adhered to an unbelievable political double standard. We didn’t think it was possible, but Donald Trump has managed to heighten the contradiction with his ill-considered comment last week about "Second Amendment people." To review, while…

People are living longer than they used to, as any reader of the obituary page can attest. But pushing the threshold of old age ever higher, or surviving to some unprecedented milestone, has problems of its own—as people at the top of the pyramid can attest.

In the fall of 1870, Theodore Roosevelt Sr. sat his 12-year-old son down for a conversation that would have condemned a lesser person to a lifetime of depression and despair. He had the right mind for success, his father told him, but not the body to support it: “You must make your body," he said.…

GEORGE W. BUSH finally became the president of Blue America around four in the afternoon on Friday, September 14, standing on rubble in downtown New York, clutching a bullhorn, telling the assembled hordes and heroes around him that the world will shortly be hearing from all of us. But by then,…

It can hardly be a coincidence that just as the emperor of Japan hinted at abdicating his throne this past weekend, the island nation’s greatest baseball player ascended to a kind of diamond royalty. Ichiro Suzuki, a 42-year-old outfielder with 16 major league seasons under his belt (Seattle…

Orlando

George Papaconstantinou has been through hell. His reputation as the finance minister who cowrote and signed Greece’s first bailout agreement with the eurozone in the spring of 2010 cost him his cabinet post the following year and his parliament seat the year after that. He spent the next three…

New York University will be making it easier for applicants with criminal records to gain admission to the school: NYU announced at the beginning of August it will now ignore the Common Application’s questions about criminal history. Instead, the school will ask more specific questions that focus…

Now that campaigns are in full swing—from races for local sheriff to the long presidential slog—we won't be able to escape the silly season soundtrack, the music that underpins TV and radio attack ads and feel-good spots alike. You've heard it all before: the gloomy, grim, and portentous sounds…

Conservatives, temperamentally respectful of the past, uncertain about the present, and doubtful of the future, are often inclined to embrace the notion that their age is one of decadence. We at The Weekly Standard have tended to resist this temptation. While we might admire works like Jacques…

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Who's in the mood for some good news?

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on the media's coverage of Donald Trump.

A bill targeting California's religious colleges was effectively declawed on Wednesday, after sustained vocal opposition from legal scholars, lawmakers, faith leaders, and university presidents.

For a myriad of obvious reasons, I am not compelled to defend Donald Trump's recent remark about "Second Amendment people" in reference to Hillary Clinton, which many have interpreted as calling for her assassination. While I think there's an evident interpretation of the remark that is innocent,…

Halfway through his Vineyard vacation, Obama staffers tweeted his second annual, and last ever, presidential playlist.

Leaders of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) manipulated intelligence to make efforts against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq look more successful than they were in reality, according to a new report by a House Republican joint task force created to investigate the matter.

Donald Trump said unequivocally Thursday morning that "this is the time" for government to borrow money for multiple spending priorities, an unusual position for the standard bearer of a GOP that made fiscal restraint one its signature positions during the tea party wave just six years ago.

On the eve of the Republican National Convention, President Obama published a piece in the Wall Street Journal lamenting "congressional inaction" on the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. We have heard that term before, of course. Obama has often used congressional inaction…

Donald Trump is not going to quit the race. The Republican party is not going to push him off the ballot. He may have a brief surge in the polls at some point, because the first rule of politics is that all races tighten.

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You should clear the decks and read Michael Barone's new piece in the American Interest. It's an examination of the future of the Republican party and I simply don't think you can have an informed view on the subject without drinking in Barone's thoughts first:

Burkini day is off. The announcement on Wednesday brought a halt to what would have been France's most controversial pool party ever.

It was a pleasant surprise to learn that Harvey Mansfield's latest "Conversation with Bill Kristol" is a discussion of his wonderful 1993 book, America's Constitutional Soul. But I was all the more pleased to tune in and discover how Kristol begins their discussion: by comparing America's…

If you're looking for another fantastic example of how the inmates are running the higher ed asylum, this from UC Berkeley's newspaper the Daily Californian is pretty hard to beat:

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with online editor Michael Warren and literary editor Philip Terzian on the dump Trump movement, its future and its past.

Lawmakers are burying the Obama administration with requests for information about a $400 million payment to Iran last January, despite administration attempts to stonewall the public on details of the payment.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton made a direct pitch to Utah voters in a Deseret News op-ed published Wednesday, trying to drive a wedge between the state's traditional preference for Republicans and the Mormon community by tying its history of being persecuted to Donald Trump's…

Pretty much the only reason conservatives have for supporting Donald Trump is the Supreme Court. "Think of SCOTUS!" is a superficially compelling argument. But only superficially.

Former Ohio Governor and Senate hopeful Ted Strickland apologized earlier Wednesday after making a joke about the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

Monday night he was seated in a waiting area, wearing a hoodie pulled over his scalp, scowling as a rival played head games in front of him.

The results of a Gallup survey released this week reinforce the message from several recent national monitoring instruments that use of marijuana by American adults is surging. From seven percent reporting regular use in 2013, the figure has nearly doubled to 13 percent answering in the affirmative…

It's been two years since Christopher Nolan had a film out—Interstellar—and four years since The Dark Knight Rises. He's currently working on Dunkirk, slated for 2017. It's been all hush-hush until a segment of a trailer leaked last week. This led to Warner Bros. releasing an "announcement"…

A cache of nearly three hundred Clinton emails, released Tuesday by Judicial Watch—most of them to or from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin—reveal close dealings between Hillary Clinton's State Department and the Clintons' family foundation.

Ohio Senate candidate Ted Strickland joked about the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Monday, saying it came "at a good time" for union workers since he was unable to cast the deciding vote in a March case that ended up in a 4-4 deadlock.

It seems a near-impossible hill for Evan McMullin, independent candidate for president, to climb. With the filing deadlines in half of the states already past and several more approaching in the coming days, the unknown 40-year-old former CIA agent doesn't have a straightforward way even to appear…

Given Donald Trump's penchant for bashing all thing China—or even his obvious relish in enunciating the country's name—one might expect Beijing to worry about the prospect of the real estate mogul rising to the presidency. And yet, there are also reasons to believe that China would welcome a Trump…

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At this late hour, there is a chance—admittedly a very slim one—that Donald Trump might wish to avoid a catastrophic loss to Hillary Clinton, or that Republican leaders might petition him to step aside as their nominee. There is time enough yet for such a thing to happen, and there is a remote—a…

House speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin crushed his GOP primary opponent Paul Nehlen Tuesday by nearly 70 points. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Ryan led Nehlen 84 percent to 16 percent.

Hillary Clinton has disavowed the support of Seddique Mateen, father of Orlando gunman Omar Mateen, a full day after he was spotted at a Clinton campaign event in Florida.

The California state assembly is seeking to weaponize Title IX, the Higher Ed Act's anti-discrimination rule, against religious colleges. The proposed legislation, SB 1146, seeks to require religiously affiliated colleges and universities to advertise their exemption from Title IX, and would expose…

It's truly unfortunate what happened to Donald Trump Tuesday. To have one's words all twisted and misconstrued—it's rather unfair. First, here's what the Republican nominee said: "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick … and if she…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on Hillary Clinton's economic plans.

The absurd saga of Ahmed "Clock Boy" Mohamed continues: Ahmed's father, who brought the family back to the Dallas suburbs for the summer, just made good on his previous threat of a $15 million lawsuit.

The National Rifle Association tweeted a brief, two-part statement Tuesday afternoon defending Donald Trump's comment earlier in the day about Hillary Clinton and the Second Amendment.

Pennsylvania has long been viewed by election analysts as a potentially decisive state in the 2016 presidential contest, but new polls out of the Keystone state show a race that isn't even close.

Democrats would not comment on the circumstances surrounding the appearance of Seddique Mateen, the father of mass shooter Omar Mateen, at a Hillary Clinton rally in Florida Monday.

Donald Trump said Tuesday if Hillary Clinton is able to select federal judges as president there is "nothing you can do" to stop it—before adding, "Although the Second Amendment, people, maybe there is, I don't know."

Since when did Arizona become a swing state? Since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president.

A veteran American diplomat who was quietly paid by Boeing while pushing for the Iran nuclear deal—which paved the way for the aerospace giant to ink a $25 billion sale with Iran—is rejecting accusations that he hid a financial motive while pushing for the accord.

You might have mixed feelings if you heard the news from the Charleston Post and Courier the other day. Either a hero has exposed his feet o' clay, or a wronged man is getting his comeuppance.

Charles J. Sykes's latest indictment of higher education, Fail U., in stores Tuesday, comes at what's widely considered a low point for the American college. "Brainwashed Bernie fanatics," and a "crisis-level plague of indecency" have gripped campuses, reflected Rick Santorum in the minutes leading…

Over at 538, Harry Enten has done some number crunching on Democratic unity following Hillary Clinton's bruising primary with Bernie Sanders and, well, it looks like she still got her work cut out for her. A recent CNN poll that was heavily touted showed Clinton nailing down the support of 91…

Reviews and News:

Acknowledging the unrest of voters dissatisfied with the nation's economy and politics, Maine Republican senator Susan Collins announced Monday night that she won't vote for presidential nominee Donald Trump, citing the candidate's personal behavior as her primary reason for withholding her support.

Last summer, workers removing chalkboards from a high school in Oklahoma City discovered another set of boards hiding underneath. They had last seen the light of day in 1917. The boards were still chalk-marked with drawings, a calendar, and mathematics. But perhaps most striking were the…

Hillary Clinton spoke to a crowd in Kissimmee, just south of Orlando. She started the speech off paying tribute to those affected by the Pulse Nightclub shooting. During her remarks, the father of the Orlando shooter sat just behind her.

Hours after Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton's economic policies a "tired" part of the past in Detroit Monday, Clinton threw the businessman's attack line back his way.

Fifty former national security officials who "served in senior national security and/or foreign policy positions in Republican Administrations, from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush" have vowed never to vote for Donald Trump.

Israeli law enforcement officials have charged Mohammed el-Halabi, an employee of World Vision, a child welfare organization supported by Christians throughout the world, of funneling millions of dollars to the anti-Semitic terror organization Hamas.

The Washington Post is reporting that "Free the Delegates," a group of activists that tried to use party rules to strip Donald Trump of the nomination at the Republican convention, is making another attempt to replace Trump on the ticket:

The recent release of anemic quarterly economic-growth numbers for 2016 has revived the debate over the Obama economy. Some say it has been okay; some say it has been lousy. In truth, the economy under President Barack Obama has been historically bad. How bad? Adjusted for inflation, average yearly…

Donald Trump's speech on the economy Monday puts him in a strong position on the issue on which Hillary Clinton is weakest and politically vulnerable.

No doubt, the "computer glitch" that caused Delta Air Lines to shut down for six hours on Monday morning, canceling some 300 scheduled flights, was a great inconvenience to many summer travelers: People make plans based on estimated times of arrival; connecting flights require a combination of luck…

This weekend's ABC News/Washington Post poll was very bad news for the Donald Trump campaign. Not only did it have Hillary Clinton with a comfortable, 50-42, lead over Trump in the head-to-head matchup, it provided more evidence that the Clinton campaign has done a better job corralling the core…

A former CIA counterterrorism officer and congressional staffer is launching a long-shot third-party bid for president, aiming to provide a conservative alternative to Republican nominee Donald Trump. The candidate's name is Evan McMullin and his campaign staff consists of operatives from the super…

An anti-Donald Trump super PAC is filing an immigration complaint against Melania Trump. According to a press release sent out Monday morning:

Records are meant to be broken. They are not meant to be pulverized with the hammer of Thor.

When my wife and I bought our condo we also wanted an amazing, new mattress so we got memory foam. It's a terrific mattress, but a little bit expensive. So we put it on our credit card.

Reviews and News:

As Ukraine fears a new Russian offensive "at any time," Republican lawmakers are remaining silent on the Trump campaign's reported role in scaling back calls for assisstance to the eastern European country in the Republican party platform.

For obvious reasons, I've lately been pondering examples from recent history where political nominees have proved too toxic for their own parties. There are more than a few examples—Tom Hayden, David Duke etc.—but only one with anything like contemporary resonance: The 1966 gubernatorial election…

A Shock in Bethany

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Michael Warren chats about the establishment striking back in Kansas, and then Andrew Stuttaford discusses the various establishments in post-Brexit disarray.

This week, America was forced to take a stance on cargo shorts, we learned about how Donald Trump sees people, and Ben Carson has an interesting take on the Khan controversy.

Prufrock is off this week and will return on August 8.

People in the United States are experiencing a level of political discontent unseen in decades. Partisans on the right have long fought against the inexorable growth of big government, just as those on the left have always railed against the growing power of big business. This year, the sides have…

Policy makers here in Washington, badly shaken by the anti-American tone of Turkish president Recep Erdoğan, want the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund—the so-called Troika—to get Greece's finances settled and the country on a path to stability. And…

In the latest episode of the Kristol Clear podcast, editor Bill Kristol speaks with Michael Graham about the terrible week for Donald Trump—and why the Republican nominee may not deserve to be counted out yet. Kristol also talks about why Hillary Clinton, running as a third term of Barack Obama,…

Hillary Clinton restated her claim Friday that the FBI assessed her as "truthful" in investigations into her handling of classified material over a private email server, saying she didn't elaborate enough when she used that characterization during a weekend interview with Fox News.

Senior writer Mark Hemingway discussed Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson's role in 2016 on Fox Business Friday.

Hundreds of "test items" from the redesigned, Common Core-aligned SAT have leaked, according to a Reuters investigation into security breaches of the company that administers the test, College Board. The confidential "test items" are new reading comprehension packets and math problems, and now…

As the presidential election enters its final three months there are plenty of indications that one of the presidential tickets is doing everything it can to limit its ceiling with voters. Even before the Republican National Convention, the mathematical wisdom suggested that Donald Trump was going…

Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said Friday that the GOP ticket was heading in the right direction, calling an unquestionably tumultuous stretch of days "an improving week."

It was the summer of 1832, and the two great Whig senators, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, had come across a brilliant plan to embarrass and damage the Democratic president, Andrew Jackson, just before the election. The Second Bank of the United States, hated by agrarians and Jacksonians, but much…

Paul Ryan said there could be something Donald Trump would do or say to lose the House speaker's endorsement but that he didn't know what that would be. In an interview Friday with Wisconsin radio host Charlie Sykes, Ryan said no endorsement of a candidate comes with a "blank check" or an…

Hillary Clinton again said that the FBI believed her email narrative to be "truthful" Wednesday, despite receiving the highest untruthfulness rating for that claim from several fact-checkers last week.

Free speech requires the Socratic "recognition that you almost certainly don't know everything," says Greg Lukianoff. Lukianoff, the founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), diagnoses a humility deficiency in the new documentary Can We Take A Joke?

Prufrock is off this week and will return on August 8.

On Thursday, Bill Kristol and chairman of the American Conservative Union, Matt Schlapp, talked about what voters will do this election and those who have endorsed Trump on CNN.

"It might may (sic) no difference, but for [Kentucky] and [West Virginia] can we get someone to ask [Sanders's] belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern…

Turin

One way of looking at this presidential election is to think of it as a fluke, though not one the Founders didn’t anticipate. It is not unusual for a major party to choose an exceedingly weak or implausible nominee—think of Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, or Michael Dukakis—who is clearly…

ALL BUT HIDDEN in the middle of President Bush’s nationally televised speech last Thursday was a significant distinction about America’s war against terrorism. "This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with its decisive liberation of territory and its swift conclusion," Bush…

Valerie Solanas (1936-1988) is remembered by most people only as a name—the name of the woman who shot Andy Warhol. On the day of the shooting, June 3, 1968, Warhol was at the pinnacle of his fame, first as a pop artist, and then, as the 1960s progressed, a cinematic auteur. Warhol’s innumerable…

At a Kentucky rally in May, Hillary Clinton announced she would put her husband “in charge of revitalizing the economy, 'cause you know he knows how to do it. And especially in places like coal country and inner cities and other parts of the country that have really been left out."

Seamus Heaney responds to Virgil’s call.

The Weekly Standard lost a member of its extended family on July 27, when Jack Davis, one of the great comic illustrators of 20th century America, died in Georgia at age 91.

As Americans, we take Stuart Davis for granted. Although he has achieved a certain canonic status, in practice that means little more than that we no longer feel that we really need to look at him. It takes an exhibition like the Whitney's "Stuart Davis: In Full Swing" to see, with redoubled force,…

"There’s nothing to be embarrassed about," Donald Trump spokesman Jason Miller told CNN when asked about his boss's reaction to the New York Post's publication of nude photos of his wife, Melania. "She's a beautiful woman."

‘GOP at 'new level of panic' over Trump," ran the banner Washington Post headline on August 4. Just two weeks earlier Donald Trump had accepted his party's presidential nomination, marking the occasion with an effective if not elegant speech. A few days later, polls showed Trump opening up a slight…

You swipe your bank card to pay for your groceries and watch the screen for the expected prompts. But in the ensuing interval, before you are able to complete your transaction, you are presented with a series of advertisements. Or you check in to your hotel and notice that the key card you are…

A day after the deal with Iran over its nuclear program was implemented in January, the Obama administration paid $1.7 billion to Iran to settle an old Iranian claim (unfinished business from the 1970s). At the same time, the Islamic Republic released four Americans it held in prison. The timing…

The nifty suspense thriller Nerve captures lightning in a bottle as it tells a cautionary tale about the role of social media in the lives of America’s teenagers. And though it was made to appeal to teenagers, I think Nerve will have the greatest emotional resonance with the parents of teens and…

The day after he was shot—four times, at close range—George Wallace won two presidential primaries. He survived the bullets, but one had clipped his spinal cord, so for the rest of his life, he would need a wheelchair to get around. Even so, he ran for president again, four years later in 1976, but…

The Scrapbook knew it was inevitable—no phenomenon can command headlines the way the Pokémon Go craze has in recent weeks without someone coming up with a social justice angle of attack. And last week, the Washington Post found it.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was quick to endorse Donald Trump, waiting fewer than 24 hours after Trump had cleared the Republican primary field. He did so by releasing a 75-word statement at eight o'clock in the evening. And that was that.

The National Academy of Sciences released a stunning report in December 2015. Coauthored by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the paper revealed “a marked increase" in the mortality rate of middle-aged non-Hispanic white Americans between 1999 and 2013--a departure from "decades of…

The erosion of America’s public square continues at an alarming rate. This week brings news that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is seriously entertaining a claim that a man wearing a hat with the image of a Gadsden flag on it—that's the famous coiled snake emblazoned with the…

In the opening salvo of her latest collection of essays—her sixth—Cynthia Ozick takes aim at those who express alarm about dwindling audiences for literature in the age of mass media:

"Millennial voters could play key role in presidential race,” declared a recent Newsday headline for an article touting "the demographic shift to a younger electorate." The article is typical of reports that millennials—the generation born from the early eighties to the early aughts—have pulled…

In my house, summer is a time of dreams. The children are sent to camps, where they are accepted as near bursting with creative, athletic, and mental abilities far too great for mere school. My wife Cynthia takes poster board and sets up a wish list for the family. Each member writes in something…

In the last days of July, German chancellor Angela Merkel rushed back to Berlin from her summer vacation to tell her countrymen how strong they were. She had done the same thing a year earlier, when Europe faced a wave of refugees from the war in Syria, joined by migrants from Iraq, Iran, and…

"GOP at 'new level of panic' over Trump," ran the banner Washington Post headline on August 4. Just two weeks earlier Donald Trump had accepted his party's presidential nomination, marking the occasion with an effective if not elegant speech. A few days later, polls showed Trump opening up a slight…

On Thursday, Bill Kristol joined MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell to talk about Republicans supporting Donald Trump.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that a report about the Obama administration sending Iran $400 million in cash was old news.

Paul Nehlen, the primary challenger to House speaker Paul Ryan, said this week that he wants to begin a debate about deporting every Muslim from the United States.

Of all the grim prospects of a Trump presidency, the thought of a reality TV star at the helm of America's nuclear arsenal should top the list. And not just any reality TV star. To wit, I could plausibly see Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, Bear Grylls from Man vs. Wild, or Bob Vila from This Old House…

Donald Trump said Wednesday that he had seen footage of a controversial $400 million cash payment that the Obama administration made to Iran in January. What he actually saw was b-roll footage that has been used in American news broadcasts.

Colorado Republican Mike Coffman has released a campaign advertisement that puts some distance between him and presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine has created some confusion about his position on the Hyde amendment, a longstanding budget measure that bans federal funding of abortion except in extreme cases.

A spate of polls taken over the weekend show Hillary Clinton enjoying a healthy bounce coming out of the Democratic National Convention. This is to be expected. What is unusual is that the Democratic party is substantially more unified than the Republican party. Indeed, the GOP electorate looks to…

So there's a bounce.

Under the category "with friends like these," Jack Moss, founder of the Black Hat and DefCon hacking conferences, called Hillary Clinton "the devil we know" while headlining a Las Vegas fundraiser for the Democratic candidate for president Wednesday night. Moss's comments echoed remarks Donald…

Prufrock is off this week and will return on August 8.

In the latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol, former senator and energy secretary Spencer Abraham and WEEKLY STANDARD staff writer Jay Cost join Bill Kristol to discuss Clinton vs. Trump, whether Trump can win, and what comes next after 2016.

Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein has selected a running mate who has called the United States a "corrupt, degenerate, white supremacist monstrosity" and says American democracy is a "lie."

A new article from the Urban Institute, a Washington-based community-engagement research organization, calls out Pokémon GO's failure to break down barriers and reach marginalized groups.

On the very day that Donald Trump announced that, as president, he would wage war on pornography, a press release arrived on my desk from the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation. The foundation, it announced, is inviting nominations for the 2016 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards, which "honor individuals…

A chorus of Republican lawmakers condemned the Obama administration Wednesday for secretly sending Iran $400 million in what critics called a ransom payment.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger has long been skeptical of Donald Trump, but said that he "wanted to get" to a place where he could feel comfortable endorsing the GOP nominee.

The latest Fox News poll, released Wednesday night, shows Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump 49 percent to 39 percent. An overwhelming majority say that Trump's response to the Muslim parents of a fallen U.S. soldier was "out of bounds."

Donald Trump rehashed his campaign's greatest hits during a rally in Florida Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Bill Kristol joined Jake Tapper to talk about Donald Trump's comments on the Khan family.

President Obama challenged "anti-government" types Wednesday to visit a nation with a poorly functioning government in order to appreciate how "useful" a well-run administration is to society.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the transfer of $400 million in cash for Iran in January coincided with not only the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal but with the release of American detainees as well. The cash came not from sanctions relief, but from the settlement of a…

The Senate campaign of Democratic candidate Ted Strickland tells the Columbus Dispatch that Strickland supports repealing the Hyde amendment, a longstanding budget measure that bans federal funding of abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, and threats to the mother's life.

The State Department is still refusing to discuss the details of a covert payment worth $400 million to Iran that coincided with the release of four American hostages from Iran in January.

Image

The Trump Taj Mahal resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey, is closing down. Here's the latest from the Press of Atlantic City:

One of the finalists to be Donald Trump's running mate is now calling the GOP nominee for president "unacceptable".

In this election we have a candidate who has said some incredibly ignorant things that run counter to the long established principles of the party that he represents. Huge numbers of people that might otherwise be inclined to vote for him are baffled by the fact he's going out of his way to…

Baoky Vu, a Georgia elector and naturalized American whose family fled communist Vietnam, can't bring himself to vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough reported that Trump had asked his foreign policy adviser repeatedly why he couldn't use nuclear weapons.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD's online editor Mike Warren said Wednesday that Donald Trump is refusing to endorse House speaker Paul Ryan and Arizona senator John McCain in order to provoke his fellow Republicans and manipulate the Republican party's power dynamic.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has been increasingly alarmed by the erratic behavior of the party's presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and has communicated his concerns to Trump campaign leadership in a series of tense conversations over the past two weeks, according to…

Chuck Todd and Hallie Jackson of NBC News report that allies of Donald Trump are planning a "candidate intervention" to convince the Republican nominee for president that his campaign needs an overhaul.

Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party platform quietly implied last week that the Citizens United Supreme Court decision will remain the law of the land for the distant future, if not forever.

At a fraught time—with Beijing blundering through the South China Sea, despite a Hague panel smacking down its bogus territorial claims, and North Korea firing ballistic missiles into Japanese waters, for example—it might behoove Japan to embrace a more conciliatory stance towards the other great…

Prufrock is off this week and will return on August 8.

During his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Donald Trump offered a litany of malevolent actors that could be blamed for America's "moment of crisis": "government incompetence" and "leaders who fail their citizens," an Obama administration that has "failed them…

In Sunset Boulevard, Gloria Swanson plays a washed up actress living as a recluse. When a stranger stumbles into her mansion, he pauses for a moment: "You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big."

The drive by Republican state attorneys general to block the overreach by the federal government into state affairs got a boost yesterday from the primary victory of Josh Hawley as Missouri AG. If elected, Hawley will add a state the growing movement of state attorneys general.

In the end, it wasn't even close. Kansas congressman Tim Huelskamp lost the Republican primary for his seat to a political novice, obstetrician Roger Marshall, by 15 points. Local news station KWCH reported just an hour after polls closed Tuesday night that Huelskamp's campaign staff "has told…

If you've been casting around since April trying to find a way to celebrate Shakespeare's 400th deathday, look no further than The Merchant of Venice, just now completing its run at the Kennedy Center. Normally you should be mortified to forget such an occasion, but the rules of etiquette begin to…

While campaigning in Florida Tuesday, Tim Kaine blamed Republicans for Congress's failure to pass a bill to do more to combat the disease. The Miami-Herald reports:

President Obama said Tuesday that Russia's suspected attempts to influence the U.S. election would not significantly affect the U.S.-Russian relationship.

Donald Trump is refusing to endorse two prominent congressional Republicans in their upcoming primaries—even after both have endorsed him. According to an interview with Washington Post, the GOP nominee says he's "not quite there yet" in endorsing House speaker and Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan,…

Netflix's new series Stranger Things has taken the binge-addicted world by storm, and for good reason: it's fantastic.

"Our Constitution is great. But it doesn't necessarily give us the right to commit suicide, okay?"

If you've spent much time on a college campus in the last couple of years, you may have seen a lush quad and neo-gothic cloister interrupted by fliers screaming "Yes Means Yes!" According to recent research on sexual consent among college students, you wouldn't be wrong to wonder whom the unsubtle…

Donald Trump set a lofty target for federal infrastructure spending Tuesday morning, saying that his administration would expend "at least double" the $275 billion over five years that Hillary Clinton has proposed.

My editorial in the latest WEEKLY STANDARD has generated several kind and thoughtful responses. Here's one that I think deserves wider readership (and which I reproduce here with the writer's permission):

Donald Trump held up a Purple Heart Tuesday at his rally in Virginia and said that while he "always wanted" the honor, obtaining a copy was "easier."

Florence is one of the two or three cities that sit on top of the art world. It has most of Michelangelo's greatest sculptures, all of Botticelli's greatest paintings, Bernini's greatest bust, and the two best Italian-Gothic churches. It has the lions' share of the world's great 13th, 14th and 15th…

The July 28 announcement that Beijing and Moscow will be carrying out "routine" joint naval exercises in the South China Sea in September is merely the latest indication that Beijing is firmly digging in its heels on its maritime territorial claims. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told a…

Editor's Note: Below is an excerpt from the boss's weekly newsletter. You can sign up for free here.

The Hillary Clinton campaign released revised versions of four campaign pins that had been quickly withdrawn from sale late last week apparently due to inadvertent offensive messages. As THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported Friday, Clinton's online store introduced a collection of pins created by…

Prufrock is off this week and will return on August 8.

Writing at the Federalist, Susan Kristol reflects on the sacrifices made by the parents of those members of the military deployed into or killed in combat—and suggests Donald Trump should have responded much more empathetically to the appearance of two such parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, at the…

Successful compensation systems generally include some form of pay-for-performance. If you are a salesperson, you receive higher commissions the more you sell. If you are an assembly line worker paid by the piece, you receive a bigger check the faster you work. Even if you are a CEO, you receive a…

In a Health Affairs article, Loren Adler and Paul Ginsburg from the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution make the rather counterintuitive claim that Obamacare has actually lowered health insurance premiums. They boldly assert that "average premiums in the individual market actually…

Donald Trump said he's worried the general election will be rigged against him during a campaign stop Monday afternoon.

On this date 50 years ago, Charles Whitman, a 25-year-old ex-Marine and engineering student, climbed to the observation deck of the Tower at the University of Texas in Austin and shot 49 people, killing 14. Earlier in the day he had stabbed his wife and mother to death; Whitman himself was shot and…

Kelden, a 15-year-old from Show Low, Arizona, is autistic. Having this neurodevelopmental disorder means that he lacks social awareness, has trouble communicating with others, and struggles academically in humanities and language classes. He has also been a victim of bullying for as long as he can…

After Donald Trump said Sunday that Russian president Vladimir Putin wasn't "going to go into Ukraine", most media outlets seized on the fact that Putin illegally annexed Crimea, formerly a part of Ukraine, in 2014.

The newly elected commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars has condemned Donald Trump's derision of the mother of a slain Muslim-American soldier who was remembered at the Democratic National Convention last week.

Florida senator Marco Rubio made one of his most definitive and direct statements in support of Donald Trump yet during a candidate forum this weekend, all but sloganeering the words "elect Trump".

Kudos to Variety for interviewing members of the cast and crew of Stand By Me, which came out in the summer of 1986. As I've insisted here before, if you grew up in the 1980s, '86 was a hell of a year for pictures: Top Gun, Platoon, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Aliens, About Last Night, and Back to…

The speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament said that a Hillary Clinton presidency would not be good for U.S.-Russian relations, Russian media reported Sunday.

The Hillary Clinton campaign is holding a fundraiser in Las Vegas this week during the annual Black Hat "global information security event." The announcements says that participants include Jeff Moss, the founder of Black Hat; Michael Sulmeyer, who, according to CSO Online is the Clinton campaign's…

Prufrock is off this week and will return on August 8.

Arizona senator John McCain has released a statement condemning fellow Republican Donald Trump's recent statements about the Khan family, whose son Humayun was a U.S. Army captain killed defending the lives of his fellow soldiers in Iraq in 2004. Khan's parents have criticized Trump's proposed ban…

France, struggling to regain a sense of normalcy after the Bastille Day atrocity in Nice, was stunned again by the murder of a priest in Normandy. It's just the latest in a string of attacks over the course of the last several years, which have left the French government struggling to find new…

Lost in last week's news flurry was that Virginia governor and fervent Hillary Clinton supporter Terry McAuliffe reportedly backtracked on his controversial statements regarding Clinton's support—or lack thereof—for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. He made more comments at a…

As the 2016 Republican National Convention began, GOP chairman Reince Priebus spoke with confidence about the coming transformation of presumptive nominee Donald Trump. "He knows the pivot is important," Priebus said. "He has been better and I think he's going to be great moving forward." Priebus…

Reflections on the Convention in Philly

The French have a clear vision of how want Britain's decision to leave the EU should play out: British businesses out of the EU, French businesses into the U.K.

A program overseen by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as part of the "reset" with Russia wound up enhancing Russia's military technology and funneling millions of dollar to the Clinton Foundation, according to a new report by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and the Government…