September 2016

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with managing editor Eric Felten on the campaign cocktails series, and an inside look at his weekly podcast The Confab.

President Barack Obama traveled to the memorial service for former prime minister and Israeli founding father Shimon Peres Friday. The service was held at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, the site of the national cemetery of Israel. The White House press office released to the public Obama's remarks at…

Editor William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast where he and Michael Graham discuss the 2016 presidential race and how Trump's strength comes from the voters' desire for change. Kristol also shares a recent anecdote about a speech he gave with Donald Trump, Jr. in attendance. Hilarity ensues.

Hillary Clinton added a wrinkle to her consistent criticism of Donald Trump's "strongman" approach to governing Friday, using the near-dictionary definition of a despot to describe the GOP nominee for president.

Last week in Miami baseball laid one of its youngest stars to rest. Jose Fernandez was a 24-year-old righthanded starter for the Miami Marlins with less than four complete major league seasons to his record. From 2013-2016, he compiled 38 wins and an earned run average of 2.58, while striking out…

Yet another controversy has engulfed Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, who, at a Friday press conference, compared his efforts to rid his country of drugs to Adolf Hitler's efforts to rid Europe of Jews. Now, you might be thinking, surely the media took his comments out of context. So let's see…

From the Washington Times:

This summer, The Scrapbook was visiting family at a Fourth of July celebration in downtown Denver. We were settling in and getting ready to watch the fireworks when we were accosted by petitioners. The fact that there is seemingly no time or place in this country where politics is considered an…

The most read story on the Washington Post website Thursday was a little number called "Enabler or family defender? How Hillary Clinton responded to husband's accusers." As a piece of explanatory journalism it was weirdly imprecise and incomplete.

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Donald Trump said the first presidential debate and the "system" were "rigged" on Thursday, despite saying he "loved" the debate and the "process" on Wednesday, which followed weeks of the Republican candidate predicting that his showdown with Clinton on Monday and the election would be tilted…

This week, the District of Columbia government proposed to deregulate the local taxi industry, which is facing challenges from ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft. Issued by the Department of For-Hire Vehicles (DFHV) through an emergency notice, the new rules permit cab drivers to institute…

While waiting for a chance to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a conservative alternative, there are right ways and wrong ways to address its 2,400 pages of shortcomings. The right way was recently demonstrated by a group of five Republican senators, who proposed a bill to offer millions of…

Since Donald Trump's debate performance on Monday, he and his surrogates have teased the idea that they might attack Hillary Clinton for Bill Clinton's past infidelities. Let's put aside the propriety of this attack, and analyze it strictly as a political maneuver. It is dubious whether this would…

Ventotene, Italy

The rise and fall of Lyndon B. Johnson from 1963 to 1968 is now recalled as a cautionary tale in the history of postwar America, illustrating at once the possibilities and perils of bold presidential leadership. Few presidents have achieved the popularity and electoral success Johnson enjoyed in…

"Great power competition” has just become a phrase that the Pentagon is forbidden to use when speaking of the People's Republic of China and the United States. The order was conveyed in the last few weeks by the White House in a classified document the contents of which were disclosed to the Navy…

Last week the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard arguments challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. The Clean Power Plan, as it is called, is central to President Barack Obama's overall…

When the first presidential debate in 1984 ended, I walked across the stage to shake Ronald Reagan’s hand. I had been one of three media questioners. Reagan looked stricken. He was fully aware how poorly he had done. Walter Mondale had outperformed him.

A.M. Juster is the pseudonym of a long-suffering Washington civil servant whose posts included a humorless tenure as commissioner of Social Security during two administrations. No wonder, then, that his secret life as a poet has the character of a release valve. Apart from his first short…

The recent appearance of two generically related novels by Louis Begley justifies a look back at the career of this extraordinary writer. Or rather, his second career since his first was as partner in the New York corporate law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) hates e-cigarettes. The devices, he says, are little more than an evil plot, "the new frontier in tobacco companies' quest to get kids addicted while they are young."

An old friend of The Scrapbook’s posted on Facebook the other day an oblique commentary on this year's campaign: "I used to like the word 'tremendous' and not know the word 'bigly.' Those were happy days."

A lifetime ago​—​on June 14, 2015, for example​—​people who worked in politics and elections thought that they understood with a fair sense of certainty how elections and politics worked. Politics, sort of like physics, had immutable laws, rather like gravity. Demography seemed to be one of them.…

In truth, farmers and environmentalists should be allies. The environmental and agricultural communities have more in common than conventional wisdom might suggest. Both desire to preserve our planet and its resources for future generations. I am not shy about saying farmers are the original…

A footnote in a book about Ronald Reagan led Gene Kopelson to drop by the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, in the fall of 2012. Kopelson is a physician, not an academically trained historian. But he had begun research on Reagan's presidential run in 1968, a campaign to which historians have…

How did Donald Trump lose the Mormons? According to a recent Pew poll, only 48 percent of Mormons now describe themselves as Republicans, compared with 61 percent during the last election cycle. For decades, Mormons have been the most reliably Republican religious group in the country. What…

Maps are a mystery to me, and my worthlessness in navigating has been a family joke for two decades. Google Maps and turn-by-turn smartphone guidance were a revelation—they have saved me from embarrassment and being late at least once a week since 2007. I am utterly dependent on them.

Last week in Miami baseball laid one of its youngest stars to rest. Jose Fernandez was a 24-year-old righthanded starter for the Miami Marlins with less than four complete major league seasons to his record. From 2013-2016, he compiled 38 wins and an earned run average of 2.58, while striking out…

A country is heading for trouble when its most popular writers worry that their words will land them in jail. France is that way now. Two years ago, TV commentator and journalist Éric Zemmour published Le Suicide français, an erudite, embittered, and nostalgic essay about the unraveling, starting…

The Republican victory in the midterm election was decisive. Now the victors must chart a sensible course for the next two years—one that demonstrates they can be trusted as America’s governing party and sets the table for 2016.

"No one has any other way left but—upward." (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, address at Harvard, June 8, 1978) After this ghastly campaign, whose ghastliness reached new heights with the performance of the Republican nominee in the first presidential debate, conservatives will have no other way left…

Putney, Vt.

I can’t remember not being a mediocre piano player, though there must have been a time when I was worse. I wasn't born vamping through the easy movements of Best Loved Classics and burying their tricky parts in clouds of pedal. (Take that, Moonlight Sonata!) No, my kind of musician is made—by going…

A casual glance at Bourgeois Equality could convey a mistaken impression that the book is for coffee-table display, for show rather than serious perusal. The volume is large (three pounds, 768 pages) and its dust jacket features a colorful painting by the 16th-century Flemish artist Joachim…

Moira Weigel opens with the man she was seeing when she began her investigation into courtship: “For weeks he had been trying to break off our thing in order to commit to another, longer-standing thing with an ex-ex he had started to call his girlfriend again, and then changing his mind. He wanted…

This election has made all the so-called political experts look like fools. Most of us thought that Trump would not enter the presidential race at all, that if he did he could not win the Republican nomination, and that if he nonetheless managed all that, he would still lose to Hillary Clinton in a…

This summer, The Scrapbook was visiting family at a Fourth of July celebration in downtown Denver. We were settling in and getting ready to watch the fireworks when we were accosted by petitioners. The fact that there is seemingly no time or place in this country where politics is considered an…

Here's some post-debate analysis that'll make your head spin. Spin right off.

Writing at City Journal, Clifford Asness notes that neither candidate on the debate stage Monday night seemed willing or able to defend free enterprise or conservative economic ideas. "There were many frustrating examples in the first debate of Donald Trump failing even to challenge Hillary…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with reporter Alice Lloyd on the absurdity of Title IX on campus.

Secretary of State John Kerry denied that the United States maintained a foreign policy of disengagement under the Obama administration, calling that perception "a marketing problem" on Thursday.

Many an aging hack writer (ahem) regrets not having worked harder in math class, or in what was once called "shop," which would have equipped us for careers built on sturdier things than words. As the assignments dry up, we could, at the very least, make a few bucks selling wobbly bookcases and…

One of the most discouraging things about the future of our republic is the creeping indifference, on all sides, to the constitutional separation of powers.

A State Department official testified Thursday morning that the administration was considering "some new" options to address Russia's activity in Syria at the request of President Obama, some seven months after Secretary of State John Kerry warned of a "plan B" in the event that an agreed-upon…

Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that the United States is edging toward dropping months of diplomatic efforts with Russia to end the Syrian civil war, after a U.S.-Russian ceasefire collapsed earlier this month and gave way to a Russia and Iran-backed offensive in the Syrian city of…

Vice President Joe Biden once triumphantly declared that Iraq would one day be seen as the Obama administration's "greatest achievement." This was back when the plan was to bring all American troops homes. There was some talk of leaving a residual force of 10,000 or so, but this plan was never…

House speaker Paul Ryan has publicly rooted for a Donald Trump victory this November, but there are still indications the two are on a different page on policy.

Is America in decline? The question has been catnip for the chattering classes for decades, especially during the Obama presidency. And now we have a presidential candidate who vows to "make America great again." Says Donald Trump: "Our country is in serious trouble. We don't win anymore. We don't…

The untimely death of handsome gorilla Harambe inspired a flood of public grief and, unavoidably, a far greater outpouring of memes mocking said grief. College students moving into dorms all over the country bonded over a raft of tasteless jokes superimposed on photos of Cincinnati's fallen son.…

A new movie on the subject from Oliver Stone and the imminent retirement of President Obama seem to have concentrated minds on the left: There is a burgeoning movement—confined, for the most part, to journalists—for Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, the fugitive national-security leaker now resident…

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RETRACTION: The following post was based on an erroneous news report from KING 5 television. Arcen Cetin is in fact a United States citizen.

I live in a little homogenized exurb about 30 miles outside of Washington. Way outside of the Beltway. Out in the "real Virginia," as George Allen once unfortunately put it. And over the weekend my little town had two craft breweries open. That's in addition to the brewery that opened last year.…

Towards the end of a recent lunch, I found myself ogling a friend's bowl of chicken pista korma. He was done, but there were still a few tender chunks of chicken left. It required enormous restraint on my part not to ask him, "Are you going to finish that?" And considering we were in a restaurant…

What would you think of a lender that holds more than one $1 trillion in loans outstanding, targets low income and minority borrowers, has a payment delinquency and default rate in excess of 25 percent, and has postponed repayment on 14 percent of its loans, but is still accruing interest on them?…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with deputy onlne editor Chris Deaton on why Tim Tebow, Vin Scully, and Dee Gordon all remind us of the narrative power of one of sports' most iconic moments.

What a strange season. Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium a man intended to propose marriage to his girlfriend. But he fumbled the ring like a knuckleball, with no one knowing where the thing would end up. The whole section looked for it. Fans used their cell phones as flashlights, parents sent their…

In the increasingly unlikely event that Donald Trump is elected president, it should be conceded that he could prove to be a transformative chief executive in unexpected ways—indeed, in ways that good progressives would, ordinarily, welcome. Case in point: The federal civil service.

As Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner reports, the House has passed legislation that will "exempt former Obamacare enrollees from the individual mandate if they lose insurance due to the collapse of one of the federally-backed markets."

Noel Field was never a very consequential spy. Unlike Alger Hiss or Larry Duggan, fellow Soviet agents in the State Department, he did not hold a policy-making position or have access to high-level information. He did his most significant damage to American and Western interests long after leaving…

Donald Trump seemed to embrace the election process Wednesday, after repeatedly expressing alarm on the campaign trail in recent weeks that it would be "rigged" against him.

It was Mickey Mantle's habit to keep his head down after hitting a home run, he said, because "the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases." But there are rare occasions when it is appropriate to violate the unwritten Baseball Code and show emotion after…

“It must be something really important, even terrible, that he's trying to hide," Hillary Clinton said during Monday night's debate. She suggested that Donald Trump hasn't released his tax returns because they would reveal venal tax-dodging: "Maybe he doesn't want the American people, all of you…

The Guardian reports that "Murders in the US rose 10.8% last year, the biggest single-year percentage jump since 1971, according to data released Monday by the FBI."

Barack Obama reportedly had Tim Kaine on his shortlist for consideration for vice president in 2008 but was concerned about Kaine's lack of foreign policy experience. Kaine has since helped shore up that hole in his resume by being on the Senate Armed Services Committee for the past three years.…

Back in the 2004, a brash state senator from Illinois lit a fire at the Democratic National Convention with his soaring rhetoric. One of Barack Obama's goals was to deliver a message of unity during a divisive campaign season, a message that Americans were more alike than they're dissimilar:

It may seem like a minor, technical issue, but it became clear to me on a visit to Taipei earlier this month that the Taiwanese government was furious that it might be blocked from even observing the triennial meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which is just getting…

Top senators fired back at the Obama administration on Tuesday after the State Department shifted blame to Congress for the collapse of a U.S.-Russian brokered ceasefire in Syria. The back-and-forth in Washington comes as the State Department refuses to rule out further talks with Moscow despite a…

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Sacramento

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

During her debate with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton implored, "please, fact checkers, get to work." Heeding her own call, her boast that while she was seretary of state exports to China increased 50 percent definitely needs to be put in context.

Taibo City, Taiwan

One can make a lot of arguments about whether or not Donald Trump scored any points in Monday night's debate, but one thing that's hard to say is that Trump substantively articulated any sort of conservative policy vision for America.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior editor Christopher Caldwell on why Monday night's debate was the biggest blowout in the history of modern presidential debates.

At the first presidential debate, Donald Trump repeated the line that an IRS audit is the reason that he has refused to release his tax returns to the public. Trump has repeated this line throughout his campaign. When he was under pressure during the Republican primary in February, Trump tweeted,…

The French have a term for when the best lines occur to someone after leaving a meeting or a dinner party. They call it L'esprit de l'escalier, the wisdom of the stairs. Here is Donald Trump's morning-after-the-debate version.

During Bill Ayers's pre-debate book talk at one of D.C.'s chain of progressive salons Busboys and Poets, I briefly feared for my life. The unrepentant terrorist seemed to look right at me—a cardigan-clad reactionary in the third row—when he said, "I get bothered by a lot of right wing trolls who…

Hillary Clinton set out to do Donald Trump the biggest favor she could Monday night: Depict him as a normal Republican.

After the debate, Donald Trump and his campaign have claimed that the Republican nominee won— according to all the polls. One new press release from Trump's campaign says he "leads post-debate surveys." It's not true. CNN and YouGov gave the win to Hillary Clinton, while the Drudge Report poll,…

Rising From the Plains, John McPhee's third installment in his multi-volume geological history of the United States Annals of the Former World, tells the story of Wyoming: its birth on the supercontinent Pangea, its arrival in North America, the growth of its mountains, the source of its fossils…

Prior to Monday night, the closest thing to a debate between the presidential candidates was the town hall on national security issues hosted by Matt Lauer three weeks prior. Though the candidates didn't share a stage, Lauer asked Hillary Clinton some specific questions about her email scandal, as…

Bill Kristol joined MSNBC to discuss Monday night's presidential debate.

It's well known that China, despite its increasing annoyance with Kim Jong-un, does not want the North Korean regime to collapse. Beijing has its own geopolitical—if utterly amoral—reasons for holding this position, primarily that it fears a united Korea with a U.S. military presence. More…

On Friday, September 23, U.S. federal judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia sentenced Kosovo-born Ardit Ferizi, a 21-year old citizen of that Balkan state, to 20 years in prison for hacking into an American-based retail company database and culling the names, email addresses,…

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Hempstead, N.Y.

The Obama administration wired almost one million dollars to an Iranian bank account in Europe last July, months before making a separate $1.7 billion payment to Iran that officials say had to be made in cash. The administration also withheld some details of the wire payment from Congress and…

Hempstead, N.Y.

Donald Trump must have neglected to watch the video of Ronald Reagan in his 1980 debate with President Carter. Had he copied the restrained and imperturbable approach of Reagan—or at least tried to—Trump could have benefitted enormously from last night's debate with Hillary Clinton. But he didn't.…

Leading up to Monday's debate, Hillary Clinton, her surrogates, and no shortage of media figures, demanded that Trump be fact checked during the debate. And they wanted Trump fact checked in real time—even if it meant moderator Lester Holt interrupt him.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on why Hillary's offense beat Trump's weak defense in the first debate.

Following Monday night's presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a CNN/ORC instapoll showed Clinton winning the debate by a large margin.

One of the theories I have about 2016 is that because the two most unpopular candidates in American history are running, the race tilts away from the candidate that has the country’s attention. When Hillary Clinton is front-and-center, as she's been for the last few weeks, she's losing. Ditto for…

Monday evening, Hillary Clinton was the archetypical post-New Deal liberal. Ever confident of the power of the federal government to tinker, she intends to grow the economy out "from the center" by strategically investing in clean energy, new social welfare programs, making the rich pay their fair…

In the first segment of the debate, Hillary Clinton started out on the defensive on trade, while Donald Trump did a pretty good job of making his case against free trade deals, NAFTA and the like (unsupported by most of the facts though that case may be). Trump also was able to tie that case to an…

During Monday night's presidential debate, Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton was telling ISIS "everything you want to do" by putting her plan to defeat the terrorist group on her website.

All day long the mantra has been the same: In Monday's debate the bar is lower for Donald Trump—all he has to do is appear plausibly presidential. Commentators on the right and left have all hit the same note, arguing that Trump needs to ditch the feisty tabloid style that he brought to many of the…

If you're watching Monday night's debate, you'll want to follow what some of THE WEEKLY STANDARD's writers and editors have to say in real time—on Twitter, of course. We'll be be live-tweeting throughout the debate, which you can follow below. Also, be sure to follow our main Twitter account.

Much like Apollo 13, Sully is about a near-miss and contains an ending about which we're all aware. (Unless, of course, you've been living in your doomsday bunker. If so, allow me to pass on the message: The chair is against the wall. The chair is against the wall. John has a long mustache. John…

Obamacare appears to be circling the drain. All the things that were predicted are coming to pass. Copays and premiums are rising and insurers are bailing out of the market. Obamacare depended, always, on young, healthy people enrolling. They would need less care so their premiums could be used pay…

Tevi Troy, a WEEKLY STANDARD contributor, historian, and veteran of the George W. Bush White House, has a new book out—Shall We Wake the President?: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office. The book is a fascinating look at a crucial, and sadly overlooked, aspect of policymaking.…

If you doubt the president's self-regard, you should follow him on Twitter or read the new issue of Vanity Fair online. Obama's interview with his favorite historian and presidential-legacy stylist Doris Kearns Goodwin didn't reveal much beyond his ample vanity. It was hardly the scholar-pundit and…

The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol features Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, discussing not-so-great but quite good and wholly enjoyable books:

Are these the droids I'm looking for?

Arnold Palmer's golf swing was no languid thing of beauty. He hit the ball like he was mad at it, and in his follow-through he looked like he was hanging on for dear life. The swing was unique. Like the man.

When Donald Trump has occasionally alluded to America's rising crime rates, Democratic partisans and the media elite—but I repeat myself!—have torched the Republican nominee. Crime is at historic lows, they cry. We know they're really serious, because they even brandish charts—though, curiously,…

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In 2006, Julia Child's memoir My Life in France was a rousing bestseller. The story of how a "6-foot-2-inch, 36-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian" (her words) transformed herself and America's appetites was a sheer delight. But it nearly didn't happen. For years she had talked about…

At approximately 9:35 a.m. on Saturday, September 17, a garbage can exploded along the route of the Seaside Semper Five Marine Corps Charity 5K Race in Seaside Park, New Jersey. Fortunately, no one was injured. The event's organizers later cited a delay, caused by registration problems and a…

"We need to start voting for leaders whom we actually want to see in office," Evan McMullin says as we sit together in a small conference room. "Or we will never get them."

The earmark, banished by House Republicans in 2011, could be making a comeback.

The New York Times, which enjoys poking fun at Fox News for claiming to be "fair and balanced," outdid itself in fairness and balance on Sunday. In its Review section it offered its readers two long columns, one laying out how Donald Trump might win the first debate, another on how Hillary Clinton…

Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez was killed in a boating accident Sunday morning. The 24-year-old right-hander was 16-8, with an ERA of 2.86, and he had the second-most strikeouts, 253 in 182.1 innings, in the major leagues. On Wednesday, he pitched 8 innings of shutout baseball against the…

Donald Trump likes dictators and likes to be liked by them. After meeting Egypt's president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last week, Trump called Sisi "a fantastic guy," gushing, "he took control of Egypt. And he really took control of it." Trump approves of the unprecedented repression that followed Sisi's…

Following reports that Hillary Clinton will bring Mark Cuban to Monday's debate, Donald Trump suggested he would bring Gennifer Flowers.

In Federalist 10, James Madison argued that the soon-to-be-ratified Constitution would serve as an effective bulwark against what John Adams, amongst others, called "the tyranny of the majority." The Founders believed this danger arose chiefly through democratic government. But John Stuart Mill…

I watched Blood Father—a tough, smart, violent little movie available on demand—on my iPad this past weekend. It works as a companion piece to Hell or High Water, the riveting bank-robber flick that many people think is the movie of the year so far, only instead of being set in hardscrabble Texas,…

There were seventy reporters credentialed to the New York Mets instructional league in Port St Lucie, Florida, this week. The 29-year-old college-football broadcaster, Christian evangelist and former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow was taking his first swings and shagging his first flies as a…

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes tells host Eric Felten about the fight for Virginia and the big candidate showdown Monday night. Jonathan V. Last reports on the quixotic Evan McMullin quest to derail Donald Trump. And Ethan Epstein explains how D.C. got two miles of track…

Golf's Ryder Cup approaches. It begins the Tuesday after this weekend, in fact, and ends on Sunday. It is the greatest team competition in a sport not really known for team competition. Golf seems, in fact, like just about the most solitary sort of athletic pursuit: One competes against the course…

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The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian, who reminds us that in the pantheon of great on screen/off screen cinema couples, Brangelina are small potatoes.

Matthew Continetti writes at the Washington Free Beacon on what President Obama's final address to the United Nations General Assembly tells us about the failure of Obama's worldview:

When you buy a shirt and the shopkeeper tries to sell you a necktie, that's cross-selling. When you pick up your to-eat-at-the-desk sandwich and the guy at the register persuades you that you need some potato chips, that's cross-selling. When thousands of Wells Fargo employees respond to pressure…

A man Donald Trump named as a foreign policy adviser earlier this year is being probed by federal officials for potentially opening up a dialogue with senior members of the Russian government, Yahoo News reported Friday afternoon.

Ted Cruz, the Texas senator and one of Donald Trump's main rivals in the Republican presidential primary, has endorsed the Republican nominee in a lengthy Facebook post. "After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I…

Editor William Kristol's weekly "Kristol Clear" podcast, on why Donald Trump would rather fight than debate, and why Hillary Clinton is hoping the Donald won't burst the elites' "bubble". Kristol also recounts his most memorable debate moments.

We need to talk about Lionel Shriver. On September 8, the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin and several other novels gave the keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers' Festival. Shriver had wanted to talk about "fiction and identity politics," but the organizers asked her to talk about "community…

Donald Trump included Utah senator Mike Lee, one of his toughest conservative critics, to his expanded list of possible Supreme Court nominees on Friday.

In the last mile of a narrowing race, Donald Trump delivered his own plan to combat the college crisis everyone's been crowing about—per the highly effective advice of progressive policy pollsters. Trump's plan is no more his than Hillary Clinton's Bernie Sanders-inspired plan is hers. Trump's…

In 2013, after Syria's President Bashar al-Assad had unquestionably engaged in chemical warfare against his own citizens, President Obama delivered this warning:

"NEW ROOSEVELT DRINK PROMISES GREAT RESULTS," screamed the headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in June of 1910. Teddy had just returned from safari, where he had picked up the nickname "Bwana Tumbo," and St. Louis bartender Henry "Papa" Harris—"eminent artificer of mixed intoxicants"—was…

The Associated Press reports:

Bill Kristol joined MSNBC Friday to talk about Monday's presidential debate. He said he'd like to see Trump choke on stage.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew played down controversy over a $1.7 billion cash payment the Obama administration made to Iran earlier this year, calling the method of payment a "technicality" after it was revealed this month that the entire sum was paid in cash, despite precedent for wire transfers…

Now that Secretary of State John Kerry has the Paris Agreement on climate change under his belt, he has set his sights on amending the 1987 Montreal Protocol that phased out "ozone-depleting substances" (ODS) such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons to help close the ozone hole over the…

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New York Times columnist Ross Douthat last week wrote an extremely controversial column about a topic that wouldn't seem so controversial on the face of it: late-night comedians. The peg was Donald Trump's recent appearance on The Tonight Show. Host Jimmy Fallon had a good-natured chat with the man…

Legislation that prohibits future cash payments to Iran passed the House on Thursday. The White House has pledged to veto the legislation, however, saying it would "undermine U.S. obligations and ultimately benefit Iran at the expense of the United States."

Donald Trump used his visit this week to the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland to speak further to the matter of judicial selection for the Supreme Court. Last May the candidate said he would name judicial conservatives to the Court, and he released a list of 11 such jurists, all of them…

In keeping with Hillary Clinton's quest to attract Millennials, her campaign store now offers an adult coloring book for sale for $15. Although the description reads "For Hillary supporters of all ages," the coloring book is clearly in the style targeted at post-adolescent amateur artists.

History will not end on November 8, 2016. The next day, the party that loses will pick itself up, dust itself off, and try again—in just 24 short months. That's how politics in a democratic republic works. While claiming that the Battle of Armageddon is upon us helps gin up turnout every two years,…

In 2006, Julia Child's memoir My Life in France was a rousing bestseller. The story of how a "6-foot-2-inch, 36-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian" (her words) transformed herself and America's appetites was a sheer delight. But it nearly didn't happen. For years she had talked about…

Sacramento

One of the most pervasive myths in American politics is that a “Big Blue Wall" will protect Democratic presidential nominees, perhaps even those who lose the popular vote. In truth, this electoral Blue Wall is more like a collection of disconnected forts—some imposing, some not—and the loss of any…

Ninety-seven years ago this month, Bolshevik troops stormed the Winter Palace at Saint Petersburg in the coup de grâce of the Russian Revolution. As much as any other event, this triumph of communism would dominate and shape the remainder of the century. To get a sense of scale, consider that the…

Taste—to paraphrase a good line from a bad writer—is the hobgoblin of little minds. At least, that's the general view today. People who complain about sagging jeans, low-cut blouses, and high-cut skirts are either laughably old-fashioned or offensively narrow-minded. Those who take exception to…

"We need to start voting for leaders whom we actually want to see in office,” Evan McMullin says as we sit together in a small conference room. "Or we will never get them."

Many an aging hack writer (ahem) regrets not having worked harder in math class, or in what was once called “shop," which would have equipped us for careers built on sturdier things than words. As the assignments dry up, we could, at the very least, make a few bucks selling wobbly bookcases and…

Within a few hours on September 17, a pressure cooker bomb exploded in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York injuring 31 people, a man stabbed 10 people in a Minnesota mall, and bombs were found near the site of a Marine Corps charity race in New Jersey. The following Monday morning, White House…

Mothering Sunday begins with the phrase “Once upon a time," but in Graham Swift's newest fiction, fairy tales are not the story. They are the springboard. This slim volume pays its respects to fairy tales, and then quickly sets to growing out of them. By its second page, the novella—and what a…

Is America in decline? The question has been catnip for the chattering classes for decades, especially during the Obama presidency. And now we have a presidential candidate who vows to “make America great again." Says Donald Trump: "Our country is in serious trouble. We don't win anymore. We don't…

We need to talk about Lionel Shriver. On September 8, the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin and several other novels gave the keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers' Festival. Shriver had wanted to talk about "fiction and identity politics," but the organizers asked her to talk about "community…

Noel Field was never a very consequential spy. Unlike Alger Hiss or Larry Duggan, fellow Soviet agents in the State Department, he did not hold a policy-making position or have access to high-level information. He did his most significant damage to American and Western interests long after leaving…

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat last week wrote an extremely controversial column about a topic that wouldn’t seem so controversial on the face of it: late-night comedians. The peg was Donald Trump's recent appearance on The Tonight Show. Host Jimmy Fallon had a good-natured chat with the man…

A group of British researchers recently discovered that they could tell the "life stories" of bees by using radar technology to track their every flight, from birth to death. This experiment draws on the work of (and would have likely delighted) Karl von Frisch, who devoted his life to…

Towards the end of a recent lunch, I found myself ogling a friend’s bowl of chicken pista korma. He was done, but there were still a few tender chunks of chicken left. It required enormous restraint on my part not to ask him, "Are you going to finish that?" And considering we were in a restaurant…

I watched Blood Father—a tough, smart, violent little movie available on demand—on my iPad this past weekend. It works as a companion piece to Hell or High Water, the riveting bank-robber flick that many people think is the movie of the year so far, only instead of being set in hardscrabble Texas,…

The president was irritated, and it showed. This was back in June, and he was answering questions from the press, something he normally does with near-insouciance. So why was he peeved on this occasion? Well, there was all this talk of “populism."

Taibo City, Taiwan

In Federalist 10, James Madison argued that the soon-to-be--ratified Constitution would serve as an effective bulwark against what John Adams, amongst others, called "the tyranny of the majority." The Founders believed this danger arose chiefly through democratic government. But John Stuart Mill…

A new movie on the subject from Oliver Stone and the imminent retirement of President Obama seem to have concentrated minds on the left: There is a burgeoning movement—confined, for the most part, to journalists—for Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, the fugitive national-security leaker now resident…

Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Wash-ing-ton, addressed a local group in Fred-ericksburg, Virginia, last week and talked about Donald Trump’s chances of winning the state. A Trump supporter thought he was downplaying Trump's prospects and left in a huff,…

At approximately 9:35 a.m. on Saturday, September 17, a garbage can exploded along the route of the Seaside Semper Five Marine Corps Charity 5K Race in Seaside Park, New Jersey. Fortunately, no one was injured. The event’s organizers later cited a delay, caused by registration problems and a…

A new Quinnipiac poll shows Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton tied at 47 percent in a head-to-head race in Colorado. When Libertarian and Green Party candidates are added into the mix, Trump is down just 2 points (44 percent to 42 percent). That's a big swing from Quinnipiac's last poll of Colorado…

In his convocation address on Monday, Northwestern University president Morton Schapiro told wide-eyed freshmen that anyone who dares oppose trigger warnings, or who belittles the pain of those microaggressed, is an "idiot" and a "lunatic."

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on the riots in the crucial battleground state of North Carolina.

“If you think you can stop me," Edison said softly, "go ahead and try. But you'll have to do it in the dark."

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice…

On Tuesday, a Pew Research Center white paper found that while the number of illegal Mexican immigrants has decreased compared with other countries, the number of illegal immigrants as a whole who stay long-term has risen considerably.

Conservative intellectuals have rightly come to despair about the academy. But amidst the darkness, there are flashes of light. One is provided by the Yale political science professor Steven B. Smith. He has made his name as an expert on Spinoza, authoring several contrarian takes on the…

There are times when it seems the entire objective of Washington and the political class is to shake down the rest of us for as much as can be had. Hillary Clinton would not be paid six figures for speaking if she were just an ordinary citizen on the lecture circuit. We've all heard her speak and…

Jorge Castañeda, the esteemed Mexican intellectual who served as his country's secretary of foreign affairs from 2000 to 2003, used a Wednesday appearance in Washington not only to declare that Donald Trump could easily make Mexico pay for a border wall, and to refute recent studies showing a…

In December of 2015, Congress did something rare: It passed a law, with bipartisan support, that President Obama signed and conservatives are championing. The Every Students Succeeds Act, known as ESSA, rolls back federal authority in local schools and limits the reach of the secretary of…

Jorge Castañeda, who served as Mexico's secretary of foreign affairs from 2000 to 2003, and who is currently a professor at New York University, appeared at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Wednesday. Castañeda, who cuts a debonair, cosmopolitan figure, exploded a couple of bits of received…

In this video conference of the Laborers' International Union of North America, Hillary Clinton actually asks a curious rhetorical question that indicates even she is frustrated by her ineffective campaign.

There was a time when the Obama administration was being urged to leave a residual force in Iraq. The presence of U.S. troops would, the argument went, have a stabilizing effect. The force, according to its proponents, would number somewhere around 10,000. This, of course, didn't happen. The…

Hillary Clinton is making a tactical mistake by focusing too much on Donald Trump and not enough on her own plans for her prospective presidency, Bill Kristol argued. Joining Brit Hume on Fox News Wednesday night, Kristol pointed out that his own experience as part of the losing campaign for George…

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the two least liked presidential candidates since the advent of modern polling. But tellingly, there is one force in politics that voters hate even more—the news media.

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This was not how the cautious, self-disciplined Prime Minister Theresa May was supposed to sound. "Yesterday I laid out the first step of an ambitious plan to set Britain on the path to being the great meritocracy of the world," she wrote in the September 9 Daily Mail. "It is a vision of a Britain…

Sometimes a play's popularity becomes its greatest weakness. When the audience knows—or even thinks it knows—what will happen, and how, and who the characters are, and what to think about their motives and flaws and failings, the performance itself risks being buried under the weight of…

The college town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, showed its true colors Tuesday. With Hillary Clinton set to roll into town the very next day, townies anxious to impress their preferred presidential candidate set aside Monday's Old Glory, replacing it on the town's street lamps with the rainbow…

With the election now a virtual dead heat, conservative opponents to Donald Trump have never faced greater pressure to support him. Capitulation is needed, it is said, because the survival of the republic is at stake. If we allow Hillary Clinton to win the presidency, our constitutional system of…

Over at his excellent Kristol Clear podcast (to which you should most definitely subscribe,) Bill Kristol argues that Monday's debate could be a really big deal. His reasons include:

Jerusalem

A Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday criticized a $1.7-billion payment the Obama administration made to Iran earlier this year, suggesting that the administration ignored a law that prohibits such payments to Iran until claims against the country from American victims of terror had been "dealt with…

Top Obama adminstration officials have characterized the threat from climate change as "more terrifying" and "more potentially destructive and destabilizing" than a host of other threats, including terrorism and diseases like Zika and Ebola.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on battleground Virginia and its role come November.

Secretary of State John Kerry addressed fellow world leaders Wednesday at an "Entry into Force" event for the United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change with a salutation that sounded like a throwback to 1970s Saturday morning cartoons: "Thank you, warriors for the planet," he praised the…

According to the Wall Street Journal, men's loafers are making a comeback. "Bergdorf Goodman's men's store, called Goodman's, is making a big push with loafers this year," writes the Journal's Ray A. Smith. "A factor behind the loafer proliferation is the move to more smart-casual dress codes at…

A new slate of state polls shows Hillary Clinton's advantage holding in key swing states this week, though the Democrat's margins indicate a competitive race in some of the most vote-rich battlegrounds.

In the Washington Post, Michael Gerson argues the thing that might cost Hillary Clinton the election is something that neither presidential candidate is spending much time talking about: Obamacare. He writes that immigration may be "the main motivating issue" that gets voters to turn out, but "the…

Everything needs a reboot these days. Classic movies, bad movies, television series, and now, apparently, bad college mascots.

If there were any doubts whether Team Trump would make a campaign issue of Hillary Clinton's maladies, they were dispelled today with a new fundraising pitch.

American hockey is better than this.

Clint Eastwood's movie about Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot who landed his plane on the Hudson River in January 2009 and saved all 155 aboard, is the damnedest thing. You know what's going to happen before you go into the theater. Even worse, it's only a few minutes in when you get that…

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The Obama administration did not inform key lawmakers that it had wired millions of dollars to Iran through the formal financial system, even as President Obama and other administration officials publicly defended using cash for a controversial $1.7 billion payment to Iran by saying that wiring…

The Internet has transformed the world so much over the last 20 years that the only constant is news articles that open by declaring how much the Internet has transformed the world.

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

House majority leader Kevin McCarthy said there is a "better way" to unite Republicans than the national party chairman's recent threat to punish future GOP presidential candidates who refuse to support Donald Trump. Speaking with reporters at the Capitol Tuesday, McCarthy responded to the comments…

The campaign manager for Donald Trump referred to George H.W. Bush as a "92-year-old former president" and said she respected his right to vote for whomever he chooses. Speaking to CNN's Erin Burnett Tuesday night, Kellyanne Conway, who last month took over as Trump's campaign manager, responded to…

Everyone is, or pretends to be, in favor of a "two-state solution," which stipulates that peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs will come only when the Palestinians can establish their own independent state next to Israel. There is nary a president, prime minister, foreign minister, or…

Washington went into one of its periodic hysterias recently when it was reported that the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that had been gouging the public was the daughter of a U.S. senator. Not that there is anything wrong with that. No laws broken and it was just business, more or less, as usual.

Over the last few days, the Clinton campaign's been on the defensive. The reason is James Asher, the former Washington bureau chief of McClatchy, has publicly claimed that Clinton aide and confidant was spreading the rumor that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore not eligible to be…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with online editor Michael Warren on President Obama's UN address.

Hillary Clinton has been putting herself forward as the carefully reasoned candidate, behaving in calm contrast to the shoot-from-the-hip (and often shoot-in-the-foot) emotionalism of Donald Trump. Clinton's camp is convinced this strategy will win her the election. But it may actually be the thing…

Donald Trump funneled more than $250,000 from his charity to cover legal settlements, according to a report published Tuesday, raising additional legal and ethical questions about the presidential candidate's past financial and charitable dealings.

Minneapolis

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are virtually tied in the key swing state of North Carolina, according a new poll from Elon University.

The father of the New York bomber alerted federal law enforcement about his son being a "terrorist" back in 2014, the New York Times reports. Mohammad Rahami, the father of Ahmad Khan Rahami, told police his son was a terrorist after the younger Rahami was arrested following a domestic dispute with…

President Obama and his defenders are trumpeting the new aid agreement with Israel as proof that he is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. In fact, it's a bad deal and should be treated the same way Obama treated prior agreements he didn't like: It should be forgotten by the next…

The University of California in Berkeley has brought back a student-led course on "Palestinian history" that had been condemned as anti-Zionist and biased against the state of Israel. The course, worth one academic credit, advocates a "decolonial alternative" for the region and had previously been…

Hillary Clinton gave a speech Monday addressed to, well, me. In Philadelphia, the Democratic candidate for president delivered an address aimed explicitly at "millennials"—those of us born, roughly, between 1982 and 1998. (Like all bogus pseudoscientific categories, who exactly constitutes a…

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The words President Obama used to sell his signature initiative, Obamacare—"if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor"—may end up the most memorable of his eight years in office. But according to information posted on Healthcare.gov, this "guarantee" from the president was wholly without…

Something remarkable happened in classical Greece, but we didn't know about it until very recently. Against all historical odds, they nourished a successful class of entrepreneurs and became wealthy.

Donald Trump outlined his tax and economic plan in Detroit on August 8. He returned to it last week for the first time in five weeks. In between, he mentioned bits of it. But concentrate on it? Nope.

One of many unfortunate effects of watching these two appalling candidates every day is that their awfulness can obscure the fact that our current president has done so much damage in his two terms in office. Digging out of that hole would be tough enough; digging out of a 12-year Obama-Clinton or…

Many readers will doubtless be familiar with some of the tales of intimidation told in Kimberly Strassel's The Intimidation Game: How the Left is Silencing Free Speech. Strassel's great accomplishment is to bring them all together in one place. She identifies a national phenomenon and fleshes it…

Bill Kristol joined CNN's Jake Tapper Monday to discuss how Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton handled responding to the attacks in New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota during the weekend.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton exchanged fierce denunciations of their national security credentials throughout the day on Monday, after separate attacks in Minnesota and New York City prompted the candidates to say the other would make the homeland less safe as president.

Minneapolis

Recent news that Wells Fargo employees had opened as many as two million unauthorized customer bank and credit card accounts since 2011 was shocking. The bank fired 5,300 workers and agreed to pay $185 million in fines to the Los Angeles City Attorney, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the…

Four years ago, President Obama won 60 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29, but by the latest national polling numbers, Hillary Clinton's support among the same age group hovers around just 30 percent. Clamoring to appeal to a Bernie Sanders-loving youth, the Clinton campaign is hewing…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on this weekend's attacks and attempted attacks in New York and New Jersey.

Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said Monday that the Obama administration had been "completely transparent" about a purchase of nuclear-related material from Iran in April, after the government confirmed this weekend that the purchase had been made by wire.

President Obama said that the government sees "no connection" among separate weekend attacks in New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota that left dozens wounded, as authorities apprehended an individual Monday morning in connection to the bombing-related incidents in the Northeast.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie was fully aware of a plan to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge in 2013, prosecutors asserted Monday. A Christie aide wrote “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" after the mayor of Fort Lee declined to endorse the governor's reelection campaign—and…

A terrorism analyst for CNN said that the recent spate of terrorist attacks could be due to "two or three lone wolves who somehow got together." David Rohde, who is also an editor at Reuters, joined CNN host Carol Costello Monday morning.

Hillary Clinton called for the rigorous screening of immigrants Monday to ensure that dangerous actors do not make their way into America.

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The White House press secretary said Monday the United States is in a "narrative fight, a narrative battle" with the Islamic State terrorist group. Josh Earnest, speaking with CNN host Chris Cuomo about the recent bombings in New York and New Jersey as well as the stabbing attack in Minnesota over…

Police are searching for a 28-year-old Afghan-born New Jersey resident they believe is behind a bombing this weekend in New York and possibly another in Jew Jersey. Here's the report from the Associated Press:

On some now-forgotten weekend back in the 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief was shown on television. By the time it was over, a certain 14-year-old in Lorain, Ohio, yearned to be John Robie, aka The Cat. Played by Cary Grant, this retired jewel thief lived in the south of France, could…

John McPhee's five-book Annals of the Former World tracks the author's geologic journey across the United States, at the fortieth parallel, on Interstate 80, using the highway's exposed rock "roadcuts" to peek into North America's geologic past. McPhee's trip was broken into five books,…

An article in Sunday's Washington Post takes a look at mooted plans to expand the D.C. Streetcar's route network. For the fortunately uninitiated, the D.C. Streetcar is a 2.2 mile form of "transportation" that 1) is slower than walking 2) cost upwards of $200 million to construct and was years late…

There are times when inordinate importance is attached to a data release. Those are times to follow rules: averages can be deceiving: you can drown in a lake with an average depth of three feet; and disaggregate to get an understanding of the real-world significance of the data.

Over at The Tower, San Diego State University student Anthony Berteaux describes the experience of two Jewish undergraduates who attended the University of California's Students of Color Conference—a self-branded "safe space"—only to be met with overpowering anti-Semitism.

On CBS's Face The Nation, John Dickerson asked Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus about how the RNC would handle Republicans who ran for president this year and don't support Trump, if they want to run again.

On several Sunday shows, those on Donald Trump's team blasted the media for focusing on the birther issue, which Trump himself made a focus of his campaign in recent days.

The latest of the Conversations with Bill Kristol series, a wide-ranging discussion between our boss and Charles Murray, is particularly fascinating. (You can find it, along with all the earlier conversations, at the website sponsored by the Foundation for Constitutional Government:…

The men who drafted the Constitution rightly earned our eternal praise. In 1787, they met in Philadelphia, where they pondered, debated, and haggled for four months. James Madison, George Washington, and the rest scrapped the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with a new governing document.

Saturday we celebrated "Constitution Day", the day (September 17, 1787) when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the final document and sent it off to the states for ratification.

Why hasn't there been more disruption in Congress? Looking at the highly disruptive presidential primary campaign, some analysts are scratching their heads and asking that very question. In primary election after primary election, Republican congressional incumbents—such as Paul Ryan, John McCain,…

Bernie Sanders fans filled football stadiums, but Hillary Clinton couldn't fill a conference room at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on Thursday.

Recovering from Obama

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes talks Trump's economic plans—are they conservative? Vic Matus joins host Eric Felten to quaff some campaign cocktails, and author Daniel Wattenberg comes by to regale us with the exploits of Stephen Decatur.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday tomorrow, actor George Clooney told anchor Chris Wallace that "It's a very funny thing, odd for me to be on the same side of an issue as Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer and George Will and people like that," noting that "usually we're not on the same side."

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Germany is blowing up again over migration. The Saxon town of Bautzen has, like dozens of similar places across Germany, a barracks for some of the million or two Middle Eastern migrants who have been streaming across the Mediterranean for the past year-and-a-half. People in Bautzen aren't used to…

The winner: John Maynard Keynes, the advocate of government spending to boost growth. The loser: Angela Merkel, the austere fighter for balanced budgets. Host at the loose fiscal celebration at Harvard University: Larry Summers. Chief mourner at the austerity funeral: Jens Weidman, at the German…

There are plenty of reasons why, after years of spreading the conspiracy theory, Donald Trump should not be given a pass after his sudden public disavowal of previous claims that President Obama was born in Kenya. However, the media are zeroing in on Trump's assertion Hillary Clinton is responsible…

Editor William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, where he discusses the state of the presidential race after a week of health scares, TV doctor visits,the return of "Birtherism," and how the media are (unintentionally) boosting the electoral prospects of the Trump they hate so much.

The Obama administration used a bank to pay for a multi-million dollar purchase of nuclear-related material from Iran, undermining the government's claim that an unrelated $1.7 billion payment to the Islamic Republic had to be made in cash, according to a top lawmaker and congressional sources who…

The Commission on Presidential Debates announced Friday afternoon that Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson will not be allowed on the presidential debate stage in September because he failed to garner at least 15 percent in national polls:

Both major-party presidential nominees were at 42 percent support or below in all seven national polls that included Gary Johnson and Jill Stein this week.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD and Bar Pilar have created a contest to find the best drinks for this presidential election season. The bartenders of Bar Pilar and the cocktail editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD will try original drinks submitted by you and we will pick the best drink in honor of Hillary and the…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Thomas Joscelyn. Joscelyn discusses his cover story with Stephen F. Hayes on President Obama's dangerous plan to close Gitmo.

Aboard her nifty new plane, Hillary Clinton took tough questions from the media on Thursday—about what TV shows she likes.

On Wednesday, Labor Secretary Perez was asked by a reporter about a study done by the American Enterprise Institute on the District of Columbia's minimum wage hike. D.C. raised its minimum wage to $10.50 an hour last July. According to AEI, following the mandatory wage increase, D.C. saw the loss…

The Yale Daily News recently published a guest column by C. Wallace Dewitt, class of 2003, noting that next year marks the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift. If the connection between the famous satirist and contemporary life at one of America's most revered—but rapidly…

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On Wednesday, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post all ran above-the-fold, page-1 headlines touting recent gains in income for the typical American household. President Obama appeared at a political rally in Philadelphia and, after citing these gains and the existence of…

Last January at Liberty University, Donald Trump told the audience that as president he would "protect Christianity." Since then he has reiterated that promise. And last week, at the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit, he declared his intention this way: In "a Trump administration our…

Minneapolis

The latest of the Conversations with Bill Kristol series, a wide-ranging discussion between our boss and Charles Murray, is particularly fascinating. (You can find it, along with all the earlier conversations, at the website sponsored by the Foundation for Constitutional Government:…

Washington went into one of its periodic hysterias recently when it was reported that the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that had been gouging the public was the daughter of a U.S. senator. Not that there is anything wrong with that. No laws broken and it was just business, more or less, as usual.

Conservative intellectuals have rightly come to despair about the academy. But amidst the darkness, there are flashes of light. One is provided by the Yale political science professor Steven B. Smith. He has made his name as an expert on Spinoza, authoring several contrarian takes on the…

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice…

President Obama and his defenders are trumpeting the new aid agreement with Israel as proof that he is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. In fact, it’s a bad deal and should be treated the same way Obama treated prior agreements he didn't like: It should be forgotten by the next…

The men who drafted the Constitution rightly earned our eternal praise. In 1787, they met in Philadelphia, where they pondered, debated, and haggled for four months. James Madison, George Washington, and the rest scrapped the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with a new governing document.

Chicago

This was not how the cautious, self-disciplined Prime Minister Theresa May was supposed to sound. “Yesterday I laid out the first step of an ambitious plan to set Britain on the path to being the great meritocracy of the world," she wrote in the September 9 Daily Mail. "It is a vision of a Britain…

Everyone is, or pretends to be, in favor of a “two-state solution," which stipulates that peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs will come only when the Palestinians can establish their own independent state next to Israel. There is nary a president, prime minister, foreign minister, or…

Something remarkable happened in classical Greece, but we didn’t know about it until very recently. Against all historical odds, they nourished a successful class of entrepreneurs and became wealthy.

In last week’s issue, Mark Hemingway highlighted the efforts of a few brave college administrators who are attempting to push back against the demands of petulant college student protests that roiled campuses last year. In particular, the University of Chicago and Purdue—where the university…

On some now-forgotten weekend back in the 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief was shown on television. By the time it was over, a certain 14-year-old in Lorain, Ohio, yearned to be John Robie, aka The Cat. Played by Cary Grant, this retired jewel thief lived in the south of France, could…

During the American Revolution, the Book of Samuel became a popular text for sermons. In particular the story of the people Israel begging for a king: “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles." Samuel…

On July 30, 1914, as war was beginning to be declared throughout Europe, Edith Wharton stood in the glow of Chartres Cathedral. Wharton’s collected writings about her travels to the front in World War I, originally published in 1915, begin with her visit to the medieval cathedral. She describes…

Stuart Stevens has found fame and fortune as a political strategist. He is one of the half-dozen or so campaign consultants in America who actually understands both politics and strategy and isn’t just grifting the needy, well-heeled marks who often find themselves compelled to run for office.

As Barack Obama prepared to enter the final year of his presidency, he sat down for an interview with Olivier Knox to discuss a bold new policy change. He had announced a year earlier that the United States would be ending its decades-long isolation of Cuba and seeking rapprochement with the…

Donald Trump outlined his tax and economic plan in Detroit on August 8. He returned to it last week for the first time in five weeks. In between, he mentioned bits of it. But concentrate on it? Nope.

Clint Eastwood’s movie about Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot who landed his plane on the Hudson River in January 2009 and saved all 155 aboard, is the damnedest thing. You know what's going to happen before you go into the theater. Even worse, it's only a few minutes in when you get that…

The New York Times editorial board took a break this past week from its usual practice of blaming Israel for being the cause of assaults against her. On Wednesday, after the terror attack on Jews praying in a synagogue in Jerusalem, the Times editors ruminated:

We have sung its praises before, but The Scrapbook would like to commend to you again the weekly email newsletter from our colleague Jonathan V. Last. It’s great, and it's free (you can sign up at newsletters.weeklystandard.com; look for "From the Desk of JVL"). Here's a taste of this week's…

Hillary Clinton said her fault was being in overdrive too much and shifting down too late amid a spell of bad health, as she took questions from the media Thursday afternoon about her tumultuous weekend and brief time away from the campaign.

Lawmakers intend to grant Israel aid on top of a multi-billion dollar package struck between the nation and the Obama administration, ignoring an agreement Israel made with the United States to refuse any additional funds from Congress for two years.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on Hillary Clinton, and why she isn't qualified to lead.

How hard it is these days for Republicans to propose policies—even ones that are rather liberal—that don't get dismissed as favoring the wealthy? Consider the maternity leave and child care policies officially put forward by Donald Trump this week: The proposals are progressive enough that they…

A bipartisan bill to reset the statute of limitations on Nazi-looted art claims made by Holocaust survivors and their heirs passed the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday morning.

A cancelled event advocating for economic boycotts of Israel has been rescheduled down the street from its original location in one of the House of Representatives office buildings, according to an invitation obtained Thursday by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The prominence of climate change has risen to the point that the issue is discussed in the White House Situation Room, President Obama said during a State Department forum for oceanic matters Thursday morning.

The New Hampshire Union Leader is endorsing Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson for president:

Observers of the Clintons have often noted that they shade the truth even when a) there's no possible benefit they could derive from a particular bit of dishonesty, or b) their falsehoods are easily disproven. Hillary Clinton's famous tale of landing in Bosnia under sniper fire (refuted by, yes,…

Let's talk some Hillary Clinton. First off, I'm totally unconcerned about her health. To begin with, as everyone knows (or should know) Hillary Clinton is immortal. That's why she drinks the blood of a unicorn every morning at sunrise. I'm sorry, what did you think Huma's real job has been all…

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Timeliness is a virtue, and Thomas Klingenstein's Douglass, which had its world-premiere this past summer at the Theater Wit in Chicago, captures the zeitgeist of our period of increasing racial tension. Through Douglass, Klingenstein hopes to reinvigorate our contemporary debates by revisiting the…

The presidential election has taken up most of the public's attention, but it is not the only interesting political battle this cycle. While the House of Representatives will likely remain in Republican hands, the Senate is up for grabs. The outlook at this point is roughly 50-50 for either party…

Ideas travel, both the bad and the good. One is shared by two life-long members of the ruling class, Hillary Clinton, standard-bearer of the Democratic party, and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, two politicians who feel threatened by the new revolt of the masses.

Late in November of the presidential election year 1888, the Detroit Free Press asked "What is Fame?" After all, things like elective office, or battlefield laurels, or citations and awards, all may fall under the cautionary motto sic transit gloria. But to have a cocktail named after you: Now…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on Hillary's "basket of deplorables" gaffe, and the subsequent media coverage.

A new Quinnipiac poll of likely voters finds Hillary Clinton up five percentage points in a one-on-one contest with Donald Trump, but her support dwindles significantly in a four-person race, particularly among young adults.

At the Washington Post, Dana Milbank has a column that takes on the rather incredible task of defending Hillary Clinton's remarks that half of Donald Trump supporters consist of "a basket of deplorables." According to Milbank, not only is Clinton right, she's being too generous:

On Tuesday night, BuzzFeed News reported the contents of private emails from former secretary of state Colin Powell. The emails, obtained by DCLeaks.com, include Powell's judgment of Donald Trump's campaign. His criticisms—among them, that "birtherism" is racist, and that Donald Trump a "national…

The Washington Examiner editorial board has declared the legacy of Barack Obama to be a transformed America—one that trusts its government and institutions less than it did when he became president. Here's an excerpt from the magazine's editorial:

On Wednesday, Thomas Joscelyn tweeted about the Iranian foreign minister counting "on ignorance of the Iranian regime's own dealings with al Qaeda." See his tweets below.

DCLeaks.com, a website with reported ties to Russian intelligence, has released hacked emails from former secretary of state Colin Powell. This morning, the New York Times reported that Powell wrote Trump was a "national disgrace" in the emails. Well, it turns out he also doesn't think very highly…

One step forward, two steps back—so goes the sorry arithmetic of the fight against political correctness on college campuses. The now-famous letter from John "Jay" Ellison, dean of students at the University of Chicago, has provoked a response from more than 150 faculty members. They are not happy.…

A tip of The Scrapbook homburg to our friends at the New Criterion, which embarks on its 35th year with a special issue this month.

Tuesday night Newt Gingrich went on Brit Hume's new show on Fox News. Gingrich is a fascinating interview because, whatever his eccentricities, he's a visionary and one of the major figures of the last century of American politics. If you want to see full-bore Gingrich, go and take in his long…

The defense spending authorization bill that the Senate passed in June came with a controversial "Draft America's Daughters" amendment attached. And now, while the House and Senate negotiate what form of the yearly military spending legislation to send to the president, a coalition of seventeen…

When awful floods inundated large swaths of Louisiana last month, thousands of Americans volunteered to travel to the southern state to aid in recovery efforts. Now that terrible flooding has inundated parts of North Korea, meanwhile, Kim Jong-un's regime is "deploying" 100,000 residents to the…

“Words matter."

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A new Bloomberg poll shows Trump leading Hillary Clinton by 5 points in Ohio:

"Democrats believe that we need to give Americans affordable banking options, including by empowering the United States Postal Service to facilitate the delivery of basic banking services." That's a statement on page twelve of the 2016 Democratic party platform. At first I thought it was a joke—a…

Fifteen years ago, Brian Mast was running on the treadmill at Palm Beach Atlantic University's gym when he looked up at the TV in disbelief. Smoke was pouring out of a gaping hole in the World Trade Center's north tower. At first, he thought he was watching a fictional show. "Then I saw the second…

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

The Democratic House lawmaker who had anonymously sponsored a controversial House event advocating for economic boycotts of Israel withdrew her sponsorship Tuesday, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has confirmed, and the briefing has also been cancelled.

Liberal members of the California Assembly are outraged today after Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would eliminate sales taxes on women's hygiene products. Proponents of the bill have misleadingly dubbed their bill as a solution to the "tampon tax" — though there is no specific tax on…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with deputy online editor Chris Deaton on Donald Trump's message discipline in the wake of Hillary's weekend stumble:

Florida senator Marco Rubio would not say Tuesday whether he still believes Donald Trump should not be trusted with the country's nuclear weapons codes.

Senate Democrats called the necessity of developing a succession plan for presidential nominee Hillary Clinton "ridiculous" and "crazy" on Tuesday, after a former chief party official floated the idea in light of the former secretary of state's health woes.

On Tuesday, multiple outlets reported that Donald Trump will propose six weeks of paid maternity leave for new mothers.

Elliott Abrams asks the question. It appears the UN may be to blame:

For years, a friend and I have been engaged in an informal contest (so informal, in fact, that it may exist only in my mind) to see who will be first to visit all 50 states. With only Alaska, Idaho, and Montana remaining on my list, it looks as if I'll win. In the spirit of sportsmanship, I will…

The press, not to mention millions of Americans, were understandably annoyed by the Hillary Clinton campaign's misleading, bordering on dishonest, claim she had merely "overheated" Sunday, after she had to be dragged into a van after apparently fainting. The general consensus is that had the…

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been dominating the conversation on anti-Israel activity at universities over the past few years. Yet few have heard of the interconnected issue involving the misuse of funding from Title VI educational grant programs, which is an underlying…

In Wisconsin's 8th congressional district, Democrat Tom Nelson is running a TV ad hitting Republican Mike Gallagher for wanting to "reduce all Social Security benefits to the poverty line." FactCheck.org reports that attack is simply not true:

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A group of lawmakers from South Korea's Saenuri party—the conservative-leaning party that President Park Geun-hye belongs to—has called for what even a few of years ago was an idea safely relegated to the fringes of Korean political discourse: for Seoul to pursue its own nuclear weapons program.…

The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal Marist poll should quiet down the chatter that John McCain could lose his Senate seat: The Arizona senator leads his Democratic challenger 57 percent to 38 percent.

At the end of August, incoming University of Chicago freshmen received a letter from dean of students Jay Ellison, accompanied by a short monograph by a Chicago history professor on academic freedom. The letter, in part, read:

Earlier tonight, the NCAA announced it was pulling seven different collegiate championship events out of North Carolina this year. The NCAA's actions were prompted by North Carolina's law that stops local governments from passing ordinances forcing businesses to allow biological men into women's…

If you live in a battleground state, odds are you've seen an anti-Trump ad railing on Trump's David Duke stumble on CNN's State of the Union.

For all the deserved flack Donald Trump has received for citing inaccurate news, he literally broke from script Monday to accurately quote the context of Hillary Clinton's description of some of his supporters as a "basket of deplorables".

The chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase wants you to know he's a patriot—definitely above "this Democratic, Republican [BS]" he criticized during a speech ripping the federal government's competence in Washington, D.C. on Monday.

If, come November 9, Donald Trump is looking for a secretary of state with the talents and experience to appease Vladimir Putin, he could do worse than retaining the current incumbent, John Kerry. As Walter Russell Mead has observed, “Watching the State Department pursue its Syria negotiation with…

Democrats in Congress are distancing themselves from a Capitol Hill briefing that will advocate for economic boycotts against Israel, as the event garners public attention but the lawmaker or lawmakers sponsoring it have not identified themselves.

A poll storm of critical states in the presidential election reflected a tightening race the last week, but they also showed a large battleground that could indicate trouble for the nominees in places their party is accustomed to winning easily.

All the best sorts of people have been talking for weeks about the dangerous pathology revealed by questions about Hillary Clinton's health—that pathology being a toxic, mutant strain of Right-Wing-Derangement Syndrome.

By now it's well known that almost no one was interested in publishing J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book. The author has saved those rejection letters, stashed away in her attic. Later, when Rowling was looking for a U.S. publisher, the only taker was Scholastic Press. Numerous publishers…

Warren Hinckle III, who died last month in San Francisco, aged 77, was a man of the past. He enjoyed a brief period of national prominence during the late 1960s, when he edited Ramparts, the aggressively leftist monthly. But during the Hinckle ascendancy, his capers and capering—often overdressed…

Former aides to President Obama took to Twitter to criticize how Hillary Clinton's campaign handled issues related to her health, following Clinton's medical episode on Sunday.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the media coverage of Hillary Clinton's health, and why the press should stop talking about "the narrative" and start reporting what Clinton has actually said and done.

Having missed its celebrated off-Broadway run two years ago, I made the trip to a refurbished movie house turned socially conscious cutting-edge theater company to catch Wall Street Journal drama critic (and occasional WEEKLY STANDARD contributor) Terry Teachout's Satchmo at the Waldorf. The play…

In the latest installment of Conversations with Bill Kristol, author and American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray discusses how changes in American society help explain the political environment in 2016. Issues include the decline of communities, immigration, and anti-trade sentiment,…

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Smoking rates have fallen appreciably in the last decade, driven by sharply higher cigarette taxes, public smoking bans, and changing mores that have made the activity basically unacceptable in many social circles.

It's hard to fall from "somewhat safe" and "questionably reliable," but the beleaguered Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has managed that feat. Having started an aggressive, long-overdue maintenance program in June, WMATA found that summer only added to its woes, as train delays left…

In presidential politics, the phrase "ground game" carries an almost mystical sense of portent. It is invoked by journalists, partisans, and campaign consultants as a vehicle for tipping close elections. But does it really matter?

And the King of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives . . . Shifra and Puah . . . If it be a son, then ye shall kill him . . . But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. – Exodus I, 15. Forcing women to undergo abortions against…

Exactly fifteen years ago today I was settled into my seat on a British Airways flight 178, scheduled to head from JFK to London in a few minutes. It was not to be. My cell phone rang: It was my wife, Cita, telling me that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center's twin towers, and…

On Fox News Sunday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich defended Donald Trump's praise of Vladimir Putin and his appearance on Russian propaganda network RT.

Hillary Clinton abandoned her traveling press pool earlier this morning at a 9/11 memorial event in New York after feeling "overheated." She was taken to her daughter Chelsea's New York apartment to recover.

Former New York mayor and Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani overlooked the existence of international humanitarian law Sunday, saying that "anything's legal" between actors during wartime.

On September 7, NBC hosted a presidential forum on issues related to national security. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were interviewed back to back and took selected questions from military personnel in attendance. It was moderated by NBC’s Matt Lauer.

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes joins host Eric Felten to talk about Hillary's sustained skid in the polls, and John McCormack tells us about the post 9/11 vets now running for Congress.

Even as the sky was falling Tuesday morning, September 11, visitors to the Nation magazine's website could find a freshly posted essay by Edward Said on the intellectual's role in the modern world. A true intellectual, Said declared, now makes it his mission to publicize those injustices that are…

In 2014, retired Army general Jack Keane joined Conversations with Bill Kristol to discuss his career, the war on terrorism, and 9/11.

In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They didn't answer the phone.

Mike was from Ohio and rowed crew. Andrew was from China and spoke little English. Jeremy, from Long Island, arrived on campus with a pet snake. Jacob was interested in architecture. Amy had cheerful eyes and long black hair.

Fifteen years after the September 11, 2001, hijackings, the al Qaeda threat is growing. Al Qaeda has the capacity to attempt a mass casualty attack inside the U.S. and Europe today.

At an LGBT gala fundraiser featuring Barbra Streisand Friday night, Hillary Clinton said half of Trump supporters are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it" and cast them into the "basket of deplorables." NBC News reports:

If you’re a denizen of D.C. (or visiting here) looking for something smart to distract you from the presidential race—and who isn't?—you're in luck. Not only has Satchmo at the Waldorf, a play by longtime Scrapbook friend and TWS contributor Terry Teachout, opened in Washington; less than two weeks…

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Roger Federer is one of the most gracious and likable athletes to have performed before mass audiences. He is a paragon of sportsmanship: polite toward his opponents, respectful of officials, joyous but self-effacing in victory, disappointed but complimentary in rare defeat. We come to root for…

There are no more yellow ribbons. For more than 20 years, in times of travail, the yellow ribbons have come out. The Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80 called forth a nationwide flowering of yellow ribbons. And at one time or another since then—can this really all have been wrought by Tony Orlando…

"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." —John Kerry, New York Times Magazine, October 10, 2004 "What American would not trade the economy we had in the 1990s, the fact that we were not at war and young Americans were not…

There has been a lot of squawking of late from the pro-Trump crowd that #NeverTrump conservatives need to put aside their doubts and support the Republican nominee.

It doesn't seem right, really—romanticizing catastrophe instead of just confronting its grim particulars head-on. Still, they cut quite a swath at Sir Harry's Bar in the Waldorf-Astoria, these brave men with forearm tattoos and walrus mustaches—firefighting volunteers who have swooped in from…

Modern societies have problems with social cohesion. Austria's problem is with adhesion. The envelopes for the postal ballots in the presidential revote scheduled for October don't stick, the interior ministry announced this week. He hinted that he might have to postpone the election. Some allege…

This week, the Washington Post fact-checked Donald Trump's charge that Hillary Clinton does not have "a presidential look."

A few cheeky tweets took down the chairman of the board of trustees at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Self-styled student activists started an online shame campaign last week, which led insurance executive and Ursinus alumnus Michael Marcon to quit the board chairmanship on…

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg again feels compelled to urge the Senate to vote on President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the seat held by the late justice Antonin Scalia. At an event this week for incoming law students at Georgetown University, Ginsburg said the Senate should vote on…

House Republicans say a culture of negligence at the Office of Personnel Management allowed the private information of millions of former and current government employees to be exposed by hackers, according to a majority report released this week by the House Committee on Oversight and Government…

Editor William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, we remember the 9/11 attacks and Bill asks—What would the Americans of September, 2001 think of the politics of 2016?

There's more than one conspicuous absence from a list of top Democratic Senate targets published Friday, and it includes Florida.

Writing in City Journal, Scott Johnson investigates allegations that Ilhan Omar, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate for Minnesota state representative who recently won her primary and is on the verge of becoming the nation's first Somali-American legislator, is legally married to her brother.

Two recent Quinnipiac University polls have some good news for Senate Republicans.

As America and THE WEEKLY STANDARD celebrate the first 100 years of the National Parks Service, worth a read is writer John McPhee's five-book series Annals of the Former World, a geologic history of the United States that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. McPhee began the series more or less by…

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial in Friday's paper explaining the Democrats' decision to filibuster a bill to combat the Zika virus:

As we go to press, the White House has reportedly offered Iran a deal regarding its nuclear program, a framework agreement with details to be worked out in the coming months. However, even as the interim agreement is set to expire November 24, it seems the Iranians have not responded to the Obama…

Thanks to Donald Trump’s critics, we know why he would have difficulty governing the country. He's inexperienced. He's hotheaded. He's narcissistic. But what about Hillary Clinton? If elected president, could she govern effectively?

This spectacular history traces the rise and plateau of the American economy since industrialization. Massive productivity gains from a networked society led to huge rises in life expectancy and per capita income. Addressing the slowdown of recent decades, economist Robert J. Gordon adopts the…

The 2010 midterm elections were the initial referendum on lawmakers who voted for Obamacare: Democrats took a thumping. But two years later President Barack Obama proclaimed the debate over the law “settled" after he won a second term, treating his reelection as a judgment on his signature…

In presidential politics, the phrase “ground game" carries an almost mystical sense of portent. It is invoked by journalists, partisans, and campaign consultants as a vehicle for tipping close elections. But does it really matter?

Hong Kong

A tip of The Scrapbook homburg to our friends at the New Criterion, which embarks on its 35th year with a special issue this month.

"Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth,” said Mike Tyson famously. Many choose to understand the former heavyweight champion's one-liner metaphorically, as an American rendition of the Prussian military strategist Helmuth von Moltke's observation that no battle plan survives…

The first time I fell victim to a prop bet (not to be confused with the sports bet) was in New Orleans in 2000. I was on spring break with some fellow greenhorns from my Jesuit high school. We were weaving through the French Quarter, loaded on Hand Grenades and freedom, wearing bull’s-eyes on our…

For years, a friend and I have been engaged in an informal contest (so informal, in fact, that it may exist only in my mind) to see who will be first to visit all 50 states. With only Alaska, Idaho, and Montana remaining on my list, it looks as if I’ll win. In the spirit of sportsmanship, I will…

Warren Hinckle III, who died last month in San Francisco, aged 77, was a man of the past. He enjoyed a brief period of national prominence during the late 1960s, when he edited Ramparts, the aggressively leftist monthly. But during the Hinckle ascendancy, his capers and capering—often overdressed…

What do Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes have in common? These French writers admired Mao Zedong, the tyrant responsible for a famine in which 40-50 million people died. He was responsible, as well, for the Cultural Revolution, which had a death toll of around…

On September 7, NBC hosted a presidential forum on issues related to national security. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were interviewed back to back and took selected questions from military personnel in attendance. It was moderated by NBC’s Matt Lauer.

At the end of August, incoming University of Chicago freshmen received a letter from dean of students Jay Ellison, accompanied by a short monograph by a Chicago history professor on academic freedom. The letter, in part, read:

If you’re a denizen of D.C. (or visiting here) looking for something smart to distract you from the presidential race—and who isn't?—you're in luck. Not only has Satchmo at the Waldorf, a play by longtime Scrapbook friend and TWS contributor Terry Teachout, opened in Washington; less than two weeks…

There is big news in the world of sports media. Try to remain calm, but, well, Skip Bayless has moved from ESPN to Fox Sports 1. The first episode of his new show—called Undisputed—ran on September 6, and it was hard to restrain one's emotions in the face of such a big development. Now, instead of…

Fifteen years ago, Brian Mast was running on the treadmill at Palm Beach Atlantic University's gym when he looked up at the TV in disbelief. Smoke was pouring out of a gaping hole in the World Trade Center's north tower. At first, he thought he was watching a fictional show. "Then I saw the second…

What exactly is the ideology that dominates American campuses today, and is increasingly influential off campus? This ideology is clearly intolerant of dissent, but what it actually affirms is so unclear that administrators, faculty, students, and outside speakers are often taken by surprise when…

A wave of sanity has finally hit some judges, legislators, and medical professionals on the issue of vaccination and the enforcement of effective standards for protecting the public from disease. Years of false claims against immunization, which led directly to the revival of certain diseases and…

There is a myth, perpetuated in the ballet world, that ballet training prepares dancers for whatever endeavor comes next. It’s a half-truth, really. We do, of course, learn discipline, focus, determination, and hard work from an early age. But because of the all-consuming nature of the profession,…

“I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people—and the people who knocked these buildings down—will hear all of us soon."

There are many deplorable assertions in the Washington Post's editorial Friday excusing Hillary Clinton's criminal conduct, but let's just start with this:

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During an appearance on Russia Today, a television network funded by the Russian government, Donald Trump said Thursday that it was "pretty unlikely" that the Kremlin is interfering in the 2016 election, though U.S. intelligence officials have claimed otherwise.

Matthew Continetti's column in the Washington Free Beacon this week reviews The Fifty Year Mission, a two-volume history of Star Trek that chronicles the tumultuous story of the science-fiction franchise from the perspective of the cast and crew.

Contemporary English is proficient at tossing up new words or phrases—"vogue words," H. W. Fowler called them, in his classic Modern English Usage—that convey less meaning than they seem to but that nonetheless apparently charm the multitudes who use them. Off tongues they come not so much tripping…

Press releases from the federal government aren't the most exciting documents around, as a general rule, and those from the National Archives are even less promising than most. But they're getting more interesting all the time, as the Archives continues its exciting transformation from a dusty…

In a recent op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, lawyer Michael W. Smith recalls a judge he clerked for in the Civil Rights era being targeted for intimidation and threats to his life and family as he ordered the desegregation of schools. Smith argues that judicial independence—not just from the…

The great lefthander Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitched a perfect game 51 years ago Friday. It was at home against the Chicago Cubs. As usual, Vin Scully called the game. Scully, who is now 88 years old, will conclude his 67-season run as the voice of the Dodgers in a game on October 2…

The Mall in Washington is about to receive the city's first unapologetically classical monument since the Jefferson Memorial was completed in 1943. After a controversial competition, the American Battle Monuments Commission has approved a World War II Memorial for construction by the end of the…

Not to be outdone by the Beijing-friendly Clinton State Department, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein of California now weighs in with a true masterpiece of China-related moral equivalence. According to a short item in the February 5 Los Angeles Times, Sen. Feinstein recently gave a speech at the…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD is soliciting applications from college seniors or recent graduates for a one-year paid fellowship as an editorial assistant, beginning in mid-July. Responsibilities include editorial research and some writing. The deadline for applications is April 1, and preference will be…

Newt Gingrich has bigger problems than being attacked by Republicans like Bill Bennett who don't like his coziness with Jesse Jackson.

Marie-France Pochna

Henry Ashby Turner

At a January 30 National Press Club luncheon in Washington, House and Senate minority leaders Richard Gephardt and Tom Daschle announced a major 1997 legislative priority for their respective Democratic caucuses. National politics, Gephardt mournfully noted, have never been "more alien to the lives…

The story is told about Degas dining at the home of his contemporary, the painter Jean Louis Forain, a 19th-century gadget freak who had one of the first telephones in Paris. Forain gleefully showed his phone to the grumpy and greatly unimpressed Degas. During the meal, the telephone rang, and…

"I cannot remember a time,” Rosamond Bernier announces early in this memoir, “when I didn’t know Leopold Stokowski.”

And speaking of Jackson, Gingrich didn't help himself with Republicans by his comment to the Los Angeles Times. Defending his invitation to Jackson to sit in his box during the State of the Union address, the speaker said: " I'm courting every American of any background." Implicit was the notion…

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

Many who would never dream of attending a violin recital have warmed to Itzhak Perlman. Voluble, funny, and charismatic, he has traded quips with David Letterman and appeared on Sesame Street. He has garnered Grammys and Emmys with boring regularity, and a Newsweek cover story named him " Top…

Henry Grunwald

Recently, Google unveiled a new feature on its website: the ability to tour, via “street view,” its Lenoir, North Carolina, data center, one of its numerous, highly guarded campuses. Google is attempting, at least partially, to lift the iron curtain—for which it has been much maligned—and show the…

The antennae of the sexism police should have tingled last week when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was describing a chat between the president and the new secretary of state. Referring to the recently unearthed information about Madeleine Albright's Jewish grandparents who were killed in…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with reporters Alice B. Lloyd and Jenna Lifhits on the justifications by Senate Democrats for blocking Zika aid and explaining away the Iranian ransom payment.

The Obama administration may have facilitated several cash payments to Iran even before its controversial $1.7 billion transfer to the country, potentially putting even more liquid money in the hands of nefarious actors backed by the Islamic Republic, according to testimony presented Thursday at a…

Vincent Hanna was strung out on coke. If that means anything to you, read on. (And if it doesn't, read on, anyway. I need the clicks.) This was just one of many revelations during a panel discussion following a Wednesday night screening of Heat, a remastered 20th anniversary edition of Michael…

Managing editor Eric Felten joined WNYC's On The Media to talk about the changing role of music in presidential campaigns.

Wednesday night, NBC hosted a presidential forum on issues related to national security and the military where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were interviewed and took selected questions from military personnel in attendance. Today host Matt Lauer served as moderator.

The Survivors' Bill of Rights is poised to receive unanimous support in the House in the coming days, just as it did in the Senate in June. It's an uncontroversial bipartisan bill to straighten out one troublesome kink in the difficult process of treating sexual assault victims.

On his Wednesday broadcast, radio host Rush Limbaugh read aloud the entirety of an essay published at the website of the Claremont Review of Books. The essay, published under the byline Publius Decius Mus, refers to the 2016 presidential race as the "Flight 93 Election," likening the stakes to…

A poll of likely voters in North Carolina taken mostly after Labor Day finds Donald Trump with a three-percentage point lead over Hillary Clinton, continuing a trend of surveys that reflect a tight race in the critical swing state.

It's bad enough when the federal government compels private American citizens to buy a product from a private company for the first time in all of United States history. It's worse when there's no choice of product.

Fifty years ago, on September 8, 1966, Star Trek premiered on NBC. It struggled through 79 meh-rated episodes before it was cancelled. No one knew it would prove to be the most influential piece of American popular culture of the past half-century.

On Thursday, Hillary Clinton gave her first press conference in over 200 days.

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Last Friday's document release by the FBI revealed a stark contradiction between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's signed Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement and her July statements to FBI agents, as THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported. Clinton told the FBI that she could not recall…

For the third time in two months, Senate Democrats blocked $1.1 billion in federal funding to fight the Zika virus on Tuesday. In voting down legislation to combat the imminent public health emergency posed by Zika, Democrats complained that Republicans slipped in a "poison pill" provision to limit…

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook has been experimenting with its hiring policies "to help diversify its largely white, largely male workforce." Thus, two years ago the company began to incentivize in-house recruiters by offering them 1.5 points "for a so-called 'diversity hire'—a black,…

The Obama administration failed to inform a number of Democratic lawmakers that a $1.7 billion payment the U.S. sent to Iran earlier this year would be made wholly in cash, according to senators who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD Wednesday.

The first week of the U.S. Open was reasonably entertaining, but I want to focus on two players, one current (Nick Kyrgios) and one recently retired (Andy Roddick) because I think they represent the opposite poles of why some of us love tennis.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on the lawsuit that cost big labor's SEIU millions.

Donald Trump's speech on national security at the Union League of Philadelphia Wednesday may have been his best imitation of a traditional, conservative Republican to date, particularly on his proposals to rebuild the U.S. military. When The Donald cites the 2014 National Defense Panel report, he's…

One hundred and fifteen years ago this week, President William McKinley was shot while attending a reception at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. His assailant, an anarchist son of Polish immigrants named Leon Czolgosz, had stood in a receiving line to shake McKinley's hand and, concealing a…

In a new George Washington University Battleground Poll of registered voters released Wednesday, respondents reported feeling reluctant about the upcoming election.

The politics of funding a divided federal government has always pitted administrations against Congress, but according to House speaker Paul Ryan, the Obama administration is taking it to new levels.

Donald Trump welcomed Florida attorney general Pam Bondi to his Mar-a-Lago club for a fundraiser supporting her campaign after her office stayed out of a multi-state lawsuit against Trump University, according to a new report.

Uri Bar-Joseph is a professor of political science at the University of Haifa and a former intelligence analyst in the Israel Defense Forces. His just published book, The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel, is the remarkable story of how Cairo playboy Ashraf Marwan betrayed his father-in-law,…

During Barack Obama's tenure in the White House, he has stacked the deck at the National Labor Relations Board with officials sympathetic to unions. (At one point, a unanimous Supreme Court decision ruled that Obama's recess appointments to the board were illegal.) The NLRB has in turn issued all…

"From our respective positions of rabbi-counselor and former Playboy model and actress, we have often warned about pornography’s corrosive effects .  .  . " ("Take the Pledge: No More Indulging Porn," by Shmuley Boteach and Pamela Anderson, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 31).

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The death of Gene Wilder last week at 83 has led to the publication of many fond encomia to a performer who had ceased being of much interest 40 years ago, precisely at the moment when he became a movie star. It was the release of a romantic chase comedy called Silver Streak in 1976 that made…

The United States paid Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, most of which was taxpayer money, around the same time that the Islamic Republic released several American prisoners, as first reported by the Associated Press.

During Tuesday's WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, I made a point that requires some amplification. The polls consistently show that the vast majority of voters—about 130 million in total—do not like either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, who were selected by just over 30 million people. There must be…

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

More questions to help you decide whether to vote, and if so, for whom. Those who shared their answers to the last round were split just about 50-50 between the two candidates.

There are two ways to challenge politically correct orthodoxies. One is to toss off outrageous remarks designed to épater les bourgeois. This requires little and accomplishes less. The other is to take the commanding orthodoxy, put it under a microscope, and dismantle it piece by piece. This is…

A new ad from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton argues "veterans deserve better" than her Republican rival, Donald Trump. The 30-second video features Trump's most infamous comments juxtaposed with images of military veterans—many of them with physical injuries—and their loved ones…

Senior writer Stephen F. Hayes joined Fox News on Tuesday to talk about updates in the presidential race and new Benghazi revelations.

Hillary Clinton palled around with reporters aboard her campaign's new "Stronger Together" plane this weekend, before eventually taking some questions from the traveling press corps.

Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce studied the effects of Hillary Clinton's proposal to make public college free for families earning less than $125,000 dollars a year. Making college free for more than 80 percent of Americans, they've found, won't make enrollment more…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on the recent polls, and why they're not as crazy as they sound.

A super-PAC backing Hillary Clinton has released an advertisement quoting Donald Trump on nuclear weapons, the latest such spot from Clinton's side calling to mind former President Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy" attack against Barry Goldwater.

Hillary Clinton is maintaining a six-point lead against Donald Trump, according to the latest NBC/Survey Monkey poll, which found Clinton with the same margin lead last week.

First, the soda tax hit Berkeley; then, it hit Philly. Now, supporters seek to expand to four other cities, with both sides facing the largest spending to date before voters head to the polls in November.

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A spokeswoman for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump played down perceived inconsistencies in his immigration platform Tuesday morning, saying that immigration is not "a top priority" among the public and stressing his commitment to a policy that resembles "touchback" for undocumented…

A new CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday shows Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton in a four-way presidential race. And in a reversal of what had been true in most 2016 polling, Clinton's favorables are worse than Trump's.

A lawyer for the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights said it best. At last week's National Sexual Assault Conference, OCR's Rachel Gettler called inconsistent sexual violence data collection by government agencies "a never-ending issue." She added with a chuckle, "We'll see if the…

It's been two weeks since I wrote in the Kristol Clear newsletter:

Speaking in Illinois Monday, Hillary Clinton touted her relationship with the Roman Catholic Church's newest saint, Teresa of Calcutta, even though the two had opposing views. "I was fortunate enough to know Mother Teresa. I was fortunate enough to even work with her," Clinton said, according to…

The New York Times reports on the death of Phyllis Schlafly:

I'm back from a day and a half at the American Political Science Association's annual meeting in Philadelphia, and here are the highlights: breakfast with an old friend at the Down Home Diner in Reading Terminal Market; dinner with several political scientists/TWS contributors at the 117-year old…

The death of Islam Karimov, the 78-year old party boss and dictatorial president of Soviet and post-Soviet Uzbekistan, a key strategic power in Central Asia, was announced September 2 in official Uzbek media. The cause of his demise was reported to be a stroke, and rumors of it had circulated for…

Everybody’s pretty excited about the resumption of commercial air travel between the United States and Cuba. Well, everybody in the media, that is: The Associated Press heralds "a new era of U.S.-Cuba travel," and the New York Times tagged along for the maiden voyage, taking note of one passenger…

President Obama will tolerate a lot for an opportunity to push his climate-change agenda. At this weekend's G20 summit meeting of the world's developed (aka "rich") nations, which account for 85 percent of the world's economy, his Chinese hosts really poured on the humiliation.

The BBC reports:

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine said Sunday that FBI documents on the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, released Friday, show why the former secretary of state was not indicted.

On Sunday, Senator Jeff Flake told CNN's Jake Tapper that if the election were held today he would not vote for Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine responded Sunday to the revelation that Hillary Clinton did not know that documents labeled 'C' were classified information by saying that it is hard to tell at times whether information is classified.

It is said that timing is everything, and it may even be so. It is certainly true that the timing of J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy has been perfect: This is the political season of white lower-class discontent, not to say despair, and this is the essential material of Vance's book. It is also his…

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes talks about The Donald's attention-grabbing immigration-policy show, and Kevin Kosar comes by to tell us about Britain's anti-alcohol freak-out.

Among the Political Scientists

The FBI's Labor Day weekend document dump regarding its investigation of Hillary Clinton gives those who thought the result was predetermined much to complain about. The FBI's notes confirm that her former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, was among the several lawyers representing Clinton in her FBI…

Adam Hochschild is a prominent San Francisco leftist, cofounder of Mother Jones, and the successful author of books on the British antislavery movement, the Belgian colonization of the Congo, World War I, and the legacy of Joseph Stalin. In assembling this volume, he faced a formidable challenge:…

Reviews and News:

For the Washington Post editorial board, nothing about Donald Trump's immigration positions—his determination to enforce United States immigration laws, his focus on American workers, his commitment to stopping President Obama's unconstitutional executive actions—makes much sense. (Amusingly, the…

Being a baseball fan, and in particular a fan of the Braves even before they moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta; and being also a fan of Braves pitcher John Smoltz, who joined the team in 1989 and retired in 2009, all but the last of those 21 seasons spent with Atlanta, I could not resist listening to…

The terrible and terrifying news of impending climate-change doom continues to roll in. This week it was a study led by researchers at Britain’s University of East Anglia: "Climate Change and Future Pollen Allergy in Europe." The scientists project that, because of rising temperatures and increased…

Jay Solomon, one of America's top national security journalists, has covered Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Over the last few years, he has focused especially on Iran, its larger regional project, and U.S.-Iran relations, including the deal over the regime's nuclear program, also known as the…

Editor William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast on Trump's visit to Mexico and its likely effect on the campaign; Why Hillary's polls have returned to record lows; and is San Fran QB Colin Kaepernick a patriot or punk?

We are having two crises. One is in the boardroom of the Federal Reserve system. In a speech to her central bank colleagues at Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen was believed by others than this writer to say that she was preparing to raise interest rates, subject of course to…

Well, the third sexting scandal was the charm. Anthony Weiner’s wife, Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, announced she was leaving him last week after the New York Post splashed a front-page photo of the former congressman sending provocative shots of himself to an Internet stranger. This time…

The FBI released interview documents of its investigation of Hillary Clinton Friday, providing details of the bureau's probe into the former secretary of state's use of a private email server in conducting official business.

Either Hillary Clinton lied to the FBI or she lied on a State Department form as she began her tenure as Secretary of State. This conclusion appears inescapable after Friday's FBI document release related to the Clinton email investigation.

A surprising German poll showed Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) tied for second place with the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) just before this weekend's regional elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The incumbent Social Democrats are at 28 percent, the CDU and the…

Last month, Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton "lacks the mental and physical stamina" to fight the war against terror. His surrogates followed up by also intimating that Hillary Clinton's health problems have affected her job performance. The Clinton supporters and the media were quite disdainful…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Hillary Clinton's falling poll and favorable numbers.

Recently, Indiana's Child Services were called in to deal with a 7-year-old boy who came to school one day with 36 bruises on his body. His mother has been charged with child abuse. The mother's lawyer, for puzzling reasons, is asking for the case to be dismissed under the state's Religious Freedom…

To some, it might read like one of those "too-weird-and horrible-to-be-true stories" about North Korea—remember the myth that Kim Jong-un had his uncle mauled to death by a pack of hungry dogs? (That's not to say that Kim will be winning any nephew of year awards anytime soon: He "merely" had his…

Former Washington senator Slade Gorton endorsed independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin Friday, describing the former CIA agent as a fresh face that will unify America.

President Barack Obama said he'll be better positioned to influence Republicans about climate change policy after completing his term, telling a reporter during an environmental-themed visit in the Pacific that he'll be more credible and convincing as a private citizen.

Matthew Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon, examines the fate of traditional conservatives in state- and congressional-level primaries—as well as the long-term implications for the Republican party and conservative movement.

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Before Israel-based documentarian Shimon Dotan ever screened his film, The Settlers, at Syracuse University, he received an email telling him that it was a bad idea.

Right now, Hillary Clinton has roughly a seven-point lead over Donald Trump in the head-to-head polls, but this shrinks to a five-point lead when voters are allowed to choose somebody else. Third-party candidates (especially Gary Johnson, the Libertarian, and Jill Stein, the Green) are combining…

This week Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump made the obligatory campaign stop to address the American Legion. Despite the rhetoric, which at times made both candidates sound like Reagan defense hawks, the reality is that the two presidential campaigns offer conflicting narratives over the state of…

Well, the third sexting scandal was the charm. Anthony Weiner’s wife, Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, announced she was leaving him last week after the New York Post splashed a front-page photo of the former congressman sending provocative shots of himself to an Internet stranger. This time…

On March 10, 2015, Hillary Clinton told reporters at a rare press conference that she had “absolute confidence that everything that could be in any way connected to work is now in the possession of the State Department."

Everybody’s pretty excited about the resumption of commercial air travel between the United States and Cuba. Well, everybody in the media, that is: The Associated Press heralds "a new era of U.S.-Cuba travel," and the New York Times tagged along for the maiden voyage, taking note of one passenger…

Madera, Calif.

To a degree, the British government’s recent freak-out over alcohol is understandable. The nation's tabloids regularly carry stories featuring individuals getting falling-down drunk and doing stupid things. "Drunk chef, 23, who used an aerosol deodorant can and lighter as a makeshift flamethrower…

It was by chance that my first reading of Culture and Anarchy with my students coincided with the centenary of its publication. But it was not by chance that I chose to read it then, in 1969, at the height of the culture war. Anticipating that war by more than a century, Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)…

Adam Hochschild is a prominent San Francisco leftist, cofounder of Mother Jones, and the successful author of books on the British antislavery movement, the Belgian colonization of the Congo, World War I, and the legacy of Joseph Stalin. In assembling this volume, he faced a formidable challenge:…

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook has been experimenting with its hiring policies “to help diversify its largely white, largely male workforce." Thus, two years ago the company began to incentivize in-house recruiters by offering them 1.5 points "for a so-called 'diversity hire'—a black,…

It is said that timing is everything, and it may even be so. It is certainly true that the timing of J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy has been perfect: This is the political season of white lower-class discontent, not to say despair, and this is the essential material of Vance's book. It is also his…

Donald Trump, brilliantly but perhaps not intentionally, created a political moment to modify his position on immigration. He didn’t seize it.

In February, Israeli archaeologists uncovered the well-preserved remains of two Copper Age houses in northern Jerusalem, the oldest such discovery in the vicinity. "The fascinating flint finds attest to the livelihood of the local population in prehistoric times," said Ronit Lupo, the Israeli…

"Sean,” said catcher Isaac Wenrich to pitcher Sean Conroy, the first openly gay active player in professional baseball history, "slow down and let me put a dip in my mouth. That wasn't a gay reference. I said dip."

Late in August, during the run-up to Ukraine’s 25th Independence Day, Vladimir Putin held a meeting of the Russian Security Council in Sevastopol, Crimea. Before and since, the Russian defense ministry has overseen military exercises in the region, as well as naval maneuvers by the Black Sea Fleet.…

"From our respective positions of rabbi-counselor and former Playboy model and actress, we have often warned about pornography’s corrosive effects .  .  . " ("Take the Pledge: No More Indulging Porn," by Shmuley Boteach and Pamela Anderson, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 31).

The terrible and terrifying news of impending climate-change doom continues to roll in. This week it was a study led by researchers at Britain’s University of East Anglia: "Climate Change and Future Pollen Allergy in Europe." The scientists project that, because of rising temperatures and increased…

There are two ways to challenge politically correct orthodoxies. One is to toss off outrageous remarks designed to épater les bourgeois. This requires little and accomplishes less. The other is to take the commanding orthodoxy, put it under a microscope, and dismantle it piece by piece. This is…

New York

The death of Gene Wilder last week at 83 has led to the publication of many fond encomia to a performer who had ceased being of much interest 40 years ago, precisely at the moment when he became a movie star. It was the release of a romantic chase comedy called Silver Streak in 1976 that made…

Contemporary English is proficient at tossing up new words or phrases—"vogue words," H. W. Fowler called them, in his classic Modern English Usage—that convey less meaning than they seem to but that nonetheless apparently charm the multitudes who use them. Off tongues they come not so much tripping…

If there’s a novel that today's "microaggressed" students should read, it's Wallace Stegner's Pulitz-er Prize-winning Angle of Repose. Published in 1971, it focuses on the life of Susan Ward (modeled on the 19th-century writer and illustrator Mary Hallock Foote), who leaves her home in the Hudson…

One noteworthy feature of the ideological divide in Washington is how immune the country’s foreign policy practitioners have been from the disfiguring aspects of hyper-partisanship. Take any random left-wing specialist in constitutional law and a counterpart from the Federalist Society, and odds…

Indiana governor Mike Pence addressed a Utah policy forum Thursday at the invitation of Senator Mike Lee, who helped lead an insurgency of anti-Donald Trump delegates at the Republican National Convention just weeks ago.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on Donald Trump's trip to Mexico and previous visits by U.S. political leaders.

British Airways resumed flights to Iran on Thursday, but the airline did not say it will give customers special warning about the risk of travel, despite government notices that describe the potential for capture and imprisonment there.

A majority of likely voters fault Bill and Hillary Clinton for failing to appropriately handle past donations to the Clinton Foundation, according to a new poll from Suffolk University and USA Today.

Donald Trump's immigration speech Wednesday night in Phoenix was unquestionably true to form—true to the Trump of the last year, and true to the "law and order" message his presidential ticket adopted when he named Mike Pence his running mate.

"Trump just failed his first foreign policy test," tweeted Hillary Clinton after Donald Trump returned from his meeting with the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto. Actually, the opposite is true: Trump was smart to accept Peña Nieto's invitation to Mexico City, and smarter still to comport…

After months of deliberation, Georgetown University has determined how it will address its 19th-century sale of 272 slaves.

In 2010, the New York Times dubbed her our "Quiet Savior from Harmful Medicines." That same year, FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg presented her with the eponymous Dr. Frances O. Kelsey Award for Excellence and Courage in Protecting Public Health. In 2000, she was inducted into the National…

A top Russian diplomat criticized the U.S. for maintaining sanctions on Iran that he said hurt the country's economy in the wake of the nuclear deal, echoing complaints the Islamic Republic has made in recent months.

The Met museum in Manhattan has turned a large part of its Asian art floors over to a temporary exhibition of all the finest Chinese paintings from its vaults: "Masterpieces of Chinese Painting From the Metropolitan Collection" will be on until October 11.

It's hard to think of a more irresistible morsel of dubious conventional wisdom than the claim that, driven by demographic change, the presidential electoral map now greatly favors the Democrats. The latest propagation of this myth is found in a long piece by National Review Online's chief…

Reviews and News:

The Clinton campaign has been pretty smart so far.

With Labor Day upon us—meaning the election is around the corner—ask yourself: "Who would I rather see in the White House?"

Just as the hippies made peace with material prosperity, the Democratic party has increasingly reached out to corporate America. The potential alliance between progressivism and big business could have major implications for American politics. If Republicans fail to offer an optimistic alternative…