475 articles
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes looks ahead to the new year when Trump takes Washington. And Ethan Epstein and Michael Warren join host Eric Felten to pronounce on the best and worst of 2016 politics.
For the last many years, my New Year's Eves have had a ritual sameness: Put on my party heels, pour several warm-up pops, then take off for a friend's house to join him, his lovely wife, and a circle of regulars, who, as my friend delicately puts it, "come to watch you make an ass of yourself."…
Russian vilification of President Obama is reaching renewed heights after the president on Thursday ordered a sweeping package of sanctions and the expulsion of 35 Russian officials from the United States, amid mounting allegations of Kremlin-led efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.
Character is often revealed in seemingly small gestures. Amid all the speculation about how retired Marine general James Mattis will manage to lead the behemoth called the Department of Defense, one personal experience I had a decade ago as a young staffer in the office of the Secretary of Defense…
Ring out the old. Please. Only 18 percent of Americans say things got better for the country in 2016 than they had been in 2015. Ring in the new. Please. Some 55 percent of Americans expect 2017 to be better for them than was 2016, up twelve points on last year's poll. Consumer confidence is at a…
Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, with predictions for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court and the wall; Why Barack Obama tried--and failed--to be the Harry Truman of the Palestinian state; Plus Bill's review of Rogue One, and why conservatives should embrace…
So long as everyone expected a Hillary Clinton victory in November's presidential election, high-minded rhetoric ruled the day at the White House. Michelle Obama's quote from the Clinton campaign trail—"When they go low, we go high"—became something of a mantra. Initially, Barack Obama even spoke…
Remember Existentialism? I heard about it, first, back in the early 1950s on a boat full of students bound for Europe. Among the many planned daily activities was a discussion about this exciting new way of thinking. It seemed to involve, centrally, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus (always in that…
After initially promising to respond to Barack Obama's recent actions against Russia for meddling in American politics, Vladimir Putin is now saying he won't respond in kind to the Obama administration's decision to expel Russian diplomats and shut down Russian facilities in America:
Not to be born is best, when all is reckoned,
In an exit interview on Monday, President Obama and his longtime friend and former adviser David Axelrod discussed the lame duck's peak popularity, his unbeatable chances had he run in 2016, and the early legs of his journey to greatness.
If you've been to an Olive Garden anytime in the last year, you'll notice the Italian casual dining chain no longer offers unlimited pasta on the menu. More consequentially, the Olive Garden menu itself is displayed by a computer monitor at your table. It's called Ziosk, a black 7-inch touchscreen…
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior editor Chris Caldwell on why Trump may be changing rules for president-elects, but Obama's making history, too.
The Obama administration announced an amendment to an executive order Thursday that introduces targeted sanctions on Russian assets here in the United States. The sanctions come in response to reported cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee and other groups by Russian-backed hackers.
Australia's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, says her country would have opposed the recent United Nations resolution that condemned Israeli settlements. The United States abstained from voting on the resolution. Here's the Sydney Morning Herald:
In the first reported strike of its kind, U.S. Central Command (CENTOM) targeted an Islamic State (ISIS) drone facility in the ongoing offensive against the terrorist organization. The attack on the "unmanned aerial vehicle [UAV] facility" near Mosul, Iraq was listed among other routine targets in…
For several years I enjoyed an affiliation with a "lifestyle" magazine that specialized in the toys and enthusiasms of the well-to-do. As a result my email address fell into the twitchy fingers of several thousand—or so it seems to me—public relations firms with names like Chill Strategics and…
The other day, I happened to click on to Amazon and read their top 100 best-selling books for that hour. As I read the list, I was shocked to note—fully understanding that as a conservative, time has passed me by—that 5 of the top 100 books had the f-word in the title.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with contributing editor Elliott Abrams on his recent essay, "John Kerry's Final, Harmful Insult to Israel."
The Obama administration is set to announce expanded sanctions on Russia this week—perhaps as soon as Thursday, according to one report—in response to the country's tampering with this year's U.S. presidential election.
In the Obama administration's waning days, global challenges to American interests abound. In Syria, which will be a bloody stain on the reputations of Barack Obama and John Kerry, the killing continues. The effort to free Mosul from ISIS is slowing. The rise of Iranian influence in the Gulf and…
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday his government has "absolutely incontestable evidence that the United States organized, advanced, and brought" an anti-Israel resolution to the United Nations Security Council. In an on-camera statement from Jerusalem, Netanyahu said he would…
Secretary of State John Kerry accused the Israeli government of undermining prospects for a two-state solution Wednesday and defended the Obama administration's decision to allow the passage of a United Nations resolution critical of Israel, underscoring that Israeli settlements "only invited U.N.…
Though civic education among the public has sunk to embarrassing levels, there has of late been an explosion in scholarship on the Founding Fathers. The intellectual giants of the revolutionary era are again all the rage among literary types, academic and otherwise.
Stopping short of apologizing for his country's attack on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered his "sincere and everlasting condolences" Tuesday to those who lost their lives.
In his Wednesday speech on the Middle East, outgoing secretary of state John Kerry said a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinian people was the only way to achieve piece. Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee for president, also scolded the leadership of the democratic Jewish state of…
Israel needs to "stay strong" until Inauguration Day, President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday, when he vows there will be a shift in policy toward the American ally.
The New York Times headline says it all: "Assad's Lesson From Aleppo: Force Works, With Few Consequences."
In 1992, in anticipation of the 1997 reversion of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong to communist Chinese rule, the United States Congress enacted the U.S.-Hong Kong Policy Act. The act made the findings that "the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China,…
Secretary of State John Kerry will lay out his vision for the Middle East peace process Wednesday, according to a State Department spokesman, less than a week after the Obama administration allowed the passage of a United Nations resolution critical of Israel.
Yet again, a doggedly optimistic American public is hopeful that next year will be better the current one, which people have described over and over as "meh," "less than glowing," and something "they would rather forget," according to the Associated Press's reporting of its regular year-in-review…
President-elect Donald Trump described the United Nations like it was a diplomatic holiday party Monday, saying it has "great potential" but implying it does little good.
Thomas Sowell is giving up his column. I can think of lots of columnists whose writing we wouldn't miss. Sowell isn't one of them. Every column he wrote in a quarter-century career as a columnist was eminently worth reading. I say this having read nearly every one of them.
President Barack Obama is set to meet with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in Hawaii on Tuesday, where the two men will honor American war casualties at Pearl Harbor. The encounter is expected to be the president's last meeting with a foreign head of state before departing office next month.
Tucked away in Jason Zengerle's New York magazine profile of outgoing Senate minority leader Harry Reid is a little nugget about what Senate Democrats and their new leader, Chuck Schumer, plan to take their first stand on in the new Congress: Donald Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services,…
Since November 8, Democrats have been searching for a scapegoat. Hillary Clinton's defeat couldn't possibly signal voters' rejection of the liberal policies that Barack Obama advanced and Clinton vowed to continue, so progressives are on a quest to find the real culprit. They have thus far floated…
Israel's deputy minister and former ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that he and the Israeli government "welcome" the proposed plan of incoming president Donald Trump to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Sources tell the Washington Free Beacon's Adam Kredo that Vice President Joe Biden lobbied foreign leaders whose countries sit on the United Nations Security Council to vote for a resolution that calls for the end of Israeli settlement activity. Here's an excerpt from the Beacon:
As you may have noticed from the date on the cover of this issue, all of us at The Weekly Standard will be taking a week off (though the digital galley slaves at weeklystandard.com—visit early and often!—are going to power through the holiday season). The Scrapbook is self-indulgently ecumenical…
Barack Obama told his former adviser and campaign manager, David Axelrod, that he could have beaten Donald Trump had the president been able to run again in 2016. The Washington Post reports on Obama's appearance on Axelrod's podcast. Here's an excerpt:
How is the new Star Wars movie, Rogue One? How the hell should I know? Does it even matter what you or I think of it? Will any negative feelings we have prevent us and our children and our children’s children from seeing the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that—and on and on…
Politics being one damn thing after another, political language never sleeps. Fortunately, the insomniac hunter of neologisms David K. Barnhart has compiled a lexicon of au courant political terms. Should confirmation be needed that Americans are innovative, democratic, and deranged by…
Israel is in real trouble. Not because of Obama's parting shot at the Jewish state and its prime minister. No, the real trouble for Israel, says the New York Times, comes from the fact that Donald Trump is about to become president. It seems that Trump's ascension to our highest office and his…
When John McPhee's four-book geologic tour of the United States was collected in 1998 and published as the Annals of the Former World, McPhee was forced to confront a serious omission. McPhee's geology tour ran along the 40th parallel, on route 80; the first two books covered America east of…
Iran was given secret exemptions allowing the country to exceed restrictions set out by the landmark nuclear deal inked last year, some of which were made public this week by the United Nations nuclear watchdog and others that are likely still being withheld, according to diplomatic sources and a…
The 1940's pop duet "Baby, It's Cold Outside" perpetuates a predatory, patriarchal rape culture, we're to understand. The premise of the song, written Frank Loesser and made famous by Esther Williams, is that in some dark corner of a Christmas party that's winding down toward dawn, a handsome…
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes talks about the DC swamp most in need of draining-the Department of Justice. And then host Eric Felten makes a batch of the essential American Christmas drink, Tom and Jerry.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on celebrating Christmas in Washington.
This Christmas, you may find time for some holiday reading between church, opening presents, drinking eggnog, and watching the cable TV marathon of A Christmas Story. THE WEEKLY STANDARD humbly provides some links from our archives, in no particular order, to just some of the terrific stories and…
The National Basketball Association gifts sports fans a showcase of holiday competition superior to the drowsy slate of Thanksgiving games served by the NFL almost every year. Turkey day football, with the league’s comparatively dominant popularity, is celebrated annually as the premier family…
When 14 members of the United Nations Security Council voted in 2011 for a resolution condemning the expansion of Israeli settlements as illegal, the Obama administration exercised the United States's veto power to block its passage. Opposition to settlements beyond Israel's borders established in…
Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, where he discusses President Obama's abandonment of Israel at the United Nations, Christmas movies (Die Hard), and looking back at the year of Trump.
For all eight years of the Obama administration, Democrats have made believe that Barack Obama is a firm and enthusiastic supporter and defender of the Jewish state. Arguments to the contrary were not only dismissed but angrily denounced as the products of nothing more than vicious partisanship.…
The United Nations Security Council passed on Friday a resolution calling for an end to further Israeli settlement—with the United States government and its U.N. ambassador Samantha Power abstaining from the vote. The United States is one of five permanent members of the Security Council with veto…
"Forgive me when you see me draw back when I would gladly mingle with you," wrote Ludwig van Beethoven in the Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter he addressed to his brothers (and humankind in general) in 1802, but never sent. "My misfortune [deafness] is doubly painful because it must lead to my…
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought out President-elect Donald Trump to help derail a United Nations resolution critical of Israeli settlements after it had been learned that the Obama administration would not veto it, an Israeli official told the Associated Press.
To fill the position of U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Donald Trump has nominated David Friedman, an accomplished lawyer and an adviser to Trump on Israeli issues. Friedman is something of a political outsider, but in a Trumpian world, that may actually be an asset. And like Trump, he has something of…
As Orwell memorably put it, sometimes the "restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." In that spirit, The Scrapbook will reiterate to our liberal friends: Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States. We don't have high hopes that they're listening to us,…
Note: There will be no Prufrock next week. Happy holidays to all.
As readers know, The Scrapbook is a longtime connoisseur of the Law of Unintended Consequences. And this election year has furnished more than a few examples.
Law and order became a flash point in this year's presidential election. And it looks like voters were not wrong to have some anxiety about rising crime—2015 was the first year that saw an increase in homicides in a decade, and the Wall Street Journal is reporting a significant uptick in homicides…
A published draft letter attributed to Republican governor Susana Martinez touting Obamacare's benefit to her state was the work of the independent New Mexico health care exchange, the exchange's office tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD, and the text was never shared with Martinez's staff before it was…
American military assistance to Lebanon should be reevaluated in the coming year, top congressional sources and experts tell THE WEEKLY STANDARD, following reports that equipment provided to the Lebanese army had been transferred to the Hezbollah terrorist organization and used to boost the Assad…
Repeal of North Carolina's controversial House Bill 2, the so-called "bathroom bill," was expected to take place Wednesday with bipartisan support. But without consensus in the state legislature's last session, the repeal effort failed.
O Festivus! O Festivus! Brighten up the most depressed of us!
As you may have noticed from the date on the cover of this issue, all of us at The Weekly Standard will be taking a week off (though the digital galley slaves at weeklystandard.com—visit early and often!—are going to power through the holiday season). The Scrapbook is self-indulgently ecumenical…
"Forgive me when you see me draw back when I would gladly mingle with you," wrote Ludwig van Beethoven in the Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter he addressed to his brothers (and humankind in general) in 1802, but never sent. "My misfortune [deafness] is doubly painful because it must lead to my…
Most people figure that when Homer finished writing The Iliad, publishing houses were breaking down his door to get first crack at it. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Homer put the finishing touches on his opus magnum, he was just another blind Greek poet who had to go out and market…
The election of Donald Trump initially seemed to be a lifeline to an American military suffering from unrelenting budget cuts—a loss of more than $250 billion in spending power from the 2009 budget alone—and an equally punishing pace of operations. The morning after the election, Forbes magazine…
It will go down as a classic do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do presidential statement. At a press conference in Berlin on November 17, Barack Obama urged his successor to “stand up" to Vladimir Putin when Russia deviates "from our values and international norms."
As readers know, The Scrapbook is a longtime connoisseur of the Law of Unintended Consequences. And this election year has furnished more than a few examples.
In this impressive intellectual biography of one of the founders of modern conservatism, Bradley Birzer makes the case for the importance of Russell Kirk (1918-94) today, in large part by making clear the extent to which Kirk’s philosophical but nonideological kind of conservatism differs from what…
Since November 8, Democrats have been searching for a scapegoat. Hillary Clinton’s defeat couldn't possibly signal voters' rejection of the liberal policies that Barack Obama advanced and Clinton vowed to continue, so progressives are on a quest to find the real culprit. They have thus far floated…
Remember Existentialism? I heard about it, first, back in the early 1950s on a boat full of students bound for Europe. Among the many planned daily activities was a discussion about this exciting new way of thinking. It seemed to involve, centrally, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus (always in that…
How is the new Star Wars movie, Rogue One? How the hell should I know? Does it even matter what you or I think of it? Will any negative feelings we have prevent us and our children and our children’s children from seeing the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that—and on and on…
Not to be born is best, when all is reckoned,
Of Donald Trump’s most prominent allies in the presidential campaign, Jeff Sessions is the last one standing. Newt Gingrich is an outside adviser to Trump and occasional critic. Chris Christie works full-time as governor of New Jersey. Rudy Giuliani didn't get the position he wanted—secretary of…
Republicans have lost the last two presidential elections, but not much else over the past six years. They’ve captured the House and Senate. They now hold 31 governorships and 69 of the 99 state legislative chambers. What this means is pretty simple: There’s an emerging Republican majority.
Though civic education among the public has sunk to embarrassing levels, there has of late been an explosion in scholarship on the Founding Fathers. The intellectual giants of the revolutionary era are again all the rage among literary types, academic and otherwise.
For several years I enjoyed an affiliation with a “lifestyle" magazine that specialized in the toys and enthusiasms of the well-to-do. As a result my email address fell into the twitchy fingers of several thousand—or so it seems to me—public relations firms with names like Chill Strategics and…
The New York Times headline says it all: “Assad's Lesson From Aleppo: Force Works, With Few Consequences."
Richmond
As Orwell memorably put it, sometimes the “restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." In that spirit, The Scrapbook will reiterate to our liberal friends: Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States. We don't have high hopes that they're listening to us,…
With just under a month until Donald Trump’s inauguration, many liberals have ratcheted up the hyperbole to the point of derangement. The New York Times editorial board has called for the abolition of the Electoral College, dismissing it as nothing more than an artifact of slavery. This came on the…
Last week in this space we sketched the case for a party of liberty. We noted that “one lesson of 2016 is that it's time to worry about liberty again." We asked whether partisans of liberty might be able to come together—"more likely informally than formally"—in its defense. We claimed the answer…
Politics being one damn thing after another, political language never sleeps. Fortunately, the insomniac hunter of neologisms David K. Barnhart has compiled a lexicon of au courant political terms. Should confirmation be needed that Americans are innovative, democratic, and deranged by…
Moscow
“. . . vast bureaucracies of civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil." (Winston Churchill)
A historian can be wise after the fact, but a political analyst must be wise before it. Most commentators failed to detect the signs of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, despite their received wisdom and psephological sensitivity. (The exception seems to have been those relying on that most…
Novelist, travel writer, essayist, and biographer Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), the 50th anniversary of whose death rolled around this year, celebrated by those survivors who had the misfortune of knowing him at all well, was as wretched and ornery a human being as anyone could be who was not actually…
Before the days of Schick and Barbasol, a lithograph from the printmaker Currier and Ives depicted President Lincoln's ZZ Top of a cabinet and the chinstrap in chief holding the Emancipation Proclamation. Over his shoulder was graybeard Gideon Welles, secretary of the navy, and to his left were…
The photos of the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey in Ankara shocked many people. Jerry Saltz, the senior art critic for New York magazine, was mesmerized by their artistry.
Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid defended the unsubstantiated charges he made about Mitt Romney's tax liability as "necessary" during an interview on Nevada public radio Wednesday.
It's Christmastime at the Washington Post—and Christmastime at the Washington Post means it's time for another article bashing Christianity, the religion that invented Christmas.
La La Land should have been a disaster. Every American movie musical it resembles has been. The plot of La La Land recalls Martin Scorsese's tiresome New York, New York, released in 1977; both feature a principled and snobbish jazz musician who falls in love with an overeager novice performer. Its…
Stop if you've heard this one before: A prominent Democrat has been found to have used a private email account to conduct public business. This time it was Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who agreed to release 2,700 pages of heretofore unreleased emails on Wednesday. The Chicago Tribune notes that…
As Barack Obama's tenure as president comes to a close, his administration is not backing off the apocalyptic climate-change rhetoric. The same week that the president used executive action to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in federally controlled areas of the Arctic and and Atlantic oceans,…
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The largest accrediting agency of for-profit educational institutions—some of which, like ITT and Corinthian Colleges have shut down, displacing thousands of students—now faces its own undoing by a vengeful administration. The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools had its federal…
Donald Trump has selected his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, to be counselor to the president. Conway, who joined the Trump campaign in August after previously working for a super PAC supporting Texas senator Ted Cruz, will "continue her role as a close advisor to the president and will work…
No story illustrates so succinctly the mainstream media's dive deep into the tank for Hillary Clinton than the year-long Easter Egg hunt for supposed outtakes from The Apprentice that would sink the presidential candidacy of its 11-year host, Donald Trump.
Have you ever heard of Marc Goodwin and Mikhail Gallatinov?
The issue of illegal immigration was a central plank in the campaign of President-elect Donald Trump and played no small role in getting him elected to the White House. His populist, "America First" position spoke to the economic anxieties of many Americans, and it could be argued that he has a…
In 2012 the Justice Department came up with what at the time seemed like a good idea. Operation Chokepoint's stated goal was "…to attack internet, telemarketing, mail, and other mass market fraud against consumers by choking fraudsters' access to the banking system." But like most genies, once it…
Some endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
One night at the beginning of November an African-American church in Greenville, Mississippi, was spray-painted with the slogan "Vote Trump" and then torched. There was no hesitation to pronounce the arson a hate crime perpetrated by vicious Trump-inspired racists. "I see this as an attack on the…
Perhaps unsurprisingly, incoming Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is among the Democrats willing to work with President-elect Trump to pass some of his more "populist" ideas into law. But the tough liberal campaigner issued a blanket statement about cooperating with the new administration.
The election may be over, but the arguments and recriminations are still going strong. Which brings up an interesting point. You frequently hear people say, "Now is not the time for recriminations," and you think, "Well, sure. Okay. Let's wait a while. There's plenty of time." But you never hear…
On this week's mega-episode, the Substandard reviews Rogue One: A Star Wars Story—and then some. Jonathan V. Last can't stop thinking about it! Victorino Matus explains the importance of Dunkirk (but from which side?). And Sonny compares David Foster Wallace to Leo Tolstoy. Plus year-end…
A new suspect in the terrorist attack that claimed a dozen lives at a Berlin Christmas market was under covert surveillance for several months this year, according to German authorities, and is now the focus of a continental manhunt launched Wednesday.
Ilyse Hogue, the president of the pro-abortion group NARAL, had been mulling a run for Democratic National Committee chair, but she announced Wednesday she will not seek the Democratic party's top post.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the three worst presidential picks to lead the State department.
The Obama administration is facing renewed criticism that it is avoiding confronting Iran over a widening list of the Islamic Republic's sanctions violations and military activities, after State Department officials would not commit to taking punitive action against a top Iranian military official…
Who has time for history, and a guide to managing disasters of the future, when such vast, self-inflicted damage—the legacy of Obamaism, the promise of Trumpism come to mind—must be dealt with at the moment? Here's a wager: Tevi Troy's new book will do well now. It's carefully researched, well…
In an interview with NPR Monday, President Obama offered some advice for President-elect Trump: Don't become overly reliant on unilateral executive actions that can be easily undone by your successor. "My suggestion to the president-elect is, you know, going through the legislative process is…
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On March 28, 2011, Barack Obama stood behind a presidential podium at the National Defense University and addressed the nation. His ostensible topic was Libya, and his ostensible purpose was to explain his decision to intervene there. And over the course of his 27-minute address, he did this.
In late September what Vanity Fair called the "Ultimate Exit Interview" was far from ultimate—rather it fell among the first of many. Timed to coincide with the first presidential debate, before Donald Trump's lewd tape leaked or Comey's blasted letter, President Barack Obama and his favorite…
British prime minister Theresa May has been in office for just five months. It hasn't been smooth sailing. Grappling with the aftermath of Brexit, May has faced anti-Brexit legal challenges, tough negotiations with disaffected European Union leaders, and a parliamentary revolt over plans to expand…
On Tuesday, President Obama announced a ban on offshore drilling for oil and natural gas within several areas of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
The Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing of the House Financial Services Committee released a report Tuesday highlighting the methods terrorist groups use to secure money and prescribing ways for the United States to combat them.
Writing at Maclean's, Terry Glavin argues the pit of blood and despair Bashar al-Assad has created with his own people in his own country of Syria—and the civilized world's acquiesence to the terror—is ushering in a new age of tyranny around the world.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for what German Chancellor Angela Merkel called a "gruesome" attack on a Berlin Christmas market Monday, which killed a dozen people and injured nearly 50 more, many of them seriously.
An internal Defense Department memo identifying President-elect Trump's four "defense priorities" as articulated by a Trump transition official makes no mention of Russia, according to Foreign Policy, which obtained the document and shared it Tuesday.
A man arrested in connection with a truck attack that killed a dozen people in Berlin Monday has been released, the Associated Press reports, with German authorities citing a lack of evidence.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with new TWS editor-in-chief Stephen F. Hayes on his vision for the magazine.
Ever since his unexpected victory, the media have been obsessing over what a Donald Trump presidency will mean for a range of important issues, such as the Paris Agreement on climate change, border enforcement, the judiciary, and Obamacare repeal. But one set of crucial concerns—those that go under…
On MSNBC's Morning Joe Tuesday, editor at large Bill Kristol discussed the idea of reintroducing liberty into the political discourse following a presidential election where the idea was absent on both sides.
Iranian officials are threatening to take action in the event that a controversial jet deal between Boeing and Iran Air collapses. Their heated rhetoric comes amid congressional opposition to the sale and mounting speculation that the deal will become unworkable under the Trump administration,…
Last Friday the FDA decided to remove the black box warning it places on the smoking cessation drug Chantix. That the black box itself existed was a source of great frustration to me, because it represented the triumph of narrative over rational economic analysis. A few compelling stories,…
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Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the incident Monday at a Berlin Christmas market that left 12 people dead and dozens more injured is a "terrorist attack." Here's the New York Times with more:
President-elect Donald Trump said Monday night that the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey earlier that day in Ankara was the work of a "radical Islamic terrorist."
Les Liaisons dangereuses, the 1782 novel of sexual intrigue by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, has become one of the most adapted literary classics in the two decades since it was reincarnated as a hit play by the British dramatist Christopher Hampton. The 1988 Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons, a…
Donald Trump issued a "Dear Pro-Life Leader" letter in September. "As we head into the final stretch of the campaign, the help of leaders like you is essential to ensure that pro-life voters know where I stand," he said. And he was specific about what "I am committed to."
In City Journal, Kay Hymnowitz has a must read essay on the how the media, which are increasingly comprised of educated women, missed the boat on Trump's support among women so badly:
Despite a heavy campaign to sway—even harass—Republican electors in, the only really unpredictable about Monday's Electoral College vote was that more Democratic electors defected from Hillary Clinton than from Donald Trump. Per Politico, Clinton advisers were not happy with even more votes of no…
President Barack Obama granted a single-day record of 231 clemencies Monday, as his White House counsel predicted there would be more in the weeks to come before he departs office in January.
Donald Trump has officially become the president-elect, as electors in Texas put the Republican nominee over the required 270 votes to win the White House over the Democrat, Hillary Clinton.
A delightful tabloid rumor gained substance Sunday night—when Sylvester Stallone issued a statement through his publicist taking himself out of the running to chair the National Endowment for the Arts.
Texas senator Ted Cruz petitioned the Smithsonian Institution Monday to correct what he called its "mistake [of] omitting the enormous legacy and impact of Justice Thomas" at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.
At least nine people have died and many more injured after a truck rammed into a Christmas market in Berlin Monday evening, according to German police.
The Obama administration finalized a long rulemaking process Monday to tighten regulation of coal mining near streams, drawing pushback from Capitol Hill who questioned the move's necessity and had hoped the government would leave the issue alone before the president departs office next month.
After a presidential election year when the word "character" was bandied all over the place—often by people possessing very little of the commodity themselves—history may have something to teach us. So readers interested in a clear definition of character, and its importance as an essential element…
The Russian ambassador to Turkey has been reported dead after a shooting Monday in the country's capital of Ankara, according to Turkey's Anadolu news agency.
The Foundation for Constitutional Government has released a new conversation with Harvey Mansfield, in which the Harvard professor discusses Donald Trump's election and, in a way, how political philosophy can inform our understanding of Trump and what Trump's victory reveals about American politics…
Vincent Viola, a businessman who owns the Florida Panthers hockey team and served in the U.S. Army on active and reserve duty, has been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be the Secretary of the Army. Reuters has more:
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The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, has been convicted of criminal charges in a French court. She could face up to a year in prison. Here is the New York Times:
"At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous, by…
On January 12, 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivered a speech in Washington, the reverberations of which were felt on the other side of the world. Describing U.S. foreign policy objectives in Asia, a region where both China and the Soviet Union were seeking to spread Marxist-Leninist…
The Washington Post's perceptive book critic Carlos Lozada examines the most lauded aspect of Barack Obama's political profile—the president's oratorical skills—and finds a troubling consistency: the primacy of Obama's own personal story. "This was a presidency preoccupied with Obama's…
The electoral college will meet Monday. The New York Times has a rundown of what to expect:
If you've ever been to Paris, you've likely seen the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois; it's directly across the street from the east end of the Louvre. Surprisingly, despite its central locations, it's off the tourists' beaten path; it's too close to the much more famous Notre Dame Cathedral and…
'Tis the season to be jolly. And for governments to show their concern for the governed, not all of whom have granted their consent to be governed by the in-crowd.
Vogue magazine and the drab world of politics are not much alike. They are prose vs. poetry, fact vs. fiction, words vs. music, dreams vs. the cold light of day. Politics is mundane and essential to the running of everything; Vogue is escape and essential to nothing, dealing in luxuries that would…
On Fox News Sunday, RNC Chairman and soon-to-be White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told Chris Wallace the president-elect would acknowledge Russian intervention in the election if the intelligence agencies would just "come out and say it" via joint report.
Arizona senator John McCain criticized President Obama's response to Russian attempts to influence the presidential election and doubled down on calls for a congressional select committee to investigate the Kremlin's involvement.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Michael Warren and Ethan Epstein step up to the Confab's microphones to talk about President-elect Trump's cabinet-in-waiting. And in these hyper partisan times, Alice Lloyd tells us about the rare bipartisanship on display in strengthening laws on…
At Large
Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast on Russian hacking, Obama's last press conference, the continuing Democratic post-election freakout, and why (or why not) pardoning Hillary would be a great idea.
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The latest Fox News poll shows 68 percent of Americans say President Obama should not pardon Hillary Clinton on his way out of the White House, and I agree. Donald Trump should do it.
Almost two decades ago, shortly after moving to New York City, I was set up on a blind date—a nice Jewish lawyer my aunt had met at her synagogue. Shortly after the small talk ended, he told me that he had just finished registering a complaint with his employer, a midtown white shoe law firm. "They…
How do you write about a world you have never seen? It's a strange question for a writer of science fiction to ask, yet this was the spark that led a young Ursula K. Le Guin to Orsinia. Orsinia, "an unimportant country of middle Europe," was where, as a young writer in the early 1950s, she began to…
As a candidate, Donald Trump promised sweeping change in the way Washington functions. He would tell voters that the system is rigged, it's broken, it's run by losers, and only he could fix it. And yet, for all this rhetoric, it is striking how typical his presidential appointments have been: Jeff…
If you thought the heated political atmosphere would cool after voters made their decision, think again. If anything, the tone of political life has turned nastier. Democrats know they can't persuade electors that Hillary really is a better choice than The Donald, but they hope to make enough noise…
President Obama tried on Friday to stop short of saying Vladimir Putin was responsible for Russian hacking into Democratic party political data, but he dropped multiple hints—his own spokesman may have called them "not particularly subtle" ones—that the American adversary was behind the activity.
At a middle school in Texas, a nurse's aide plastered her office door with a festive handmade poster quoting Linus's scripture recitation from A Charlie Brown Christmas:
Fundamentally, the world of sensory experience is raw and ruthless. Chaos abounds, and events flow into one another without rhyme or reason. There are no clear beginnings or endings; no sense of triumph or despair. There is no Heaven or Hell. At its most innocent, the human mind is overwhelmed…
CNN reports:
Over at the Washington Examiner, Philip Klein has the must-read health care policy story of the day. Klein's spoken to several legislative aides about the GOP plans to repeal Obamacare:
Having run twice, and unsuccessfully, for the presidency, Hillary Rodham Clinton is now an official object lesson in how not to run for political office. No doubt, Clinton was a subpar candidate—especially when compared with her husband—but one strike against her is manifestly unfair: that she had…
An Israeli advocacy group is seeking to collect billions in terror-related damages from Iran and in the meantime put a hold on the delivery of dozens of Boeing airliners to Tehran, the Associated Press reports.
The U.S. State Department updated its travel warning for Ukraine this week, backing off a recommendation that U.S. citizens currently in Crimea and the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk leave the area. The warning posted Wednesday advises U.S. citizens "to avoid all travel to" those regions of…
Editor's note: The piece below first ran on THE WEEKLY STANDARD's website in May 2002, upon the release of Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones. It is reprinted here to commemorate Friday's release of the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which serves as a standalone…
To be honest, The Scrapbook is nowhere near as exercised as it might be about the removal, by a gaggle of undergraduates, of William Shakespeare's portrait from its prominent position on the wall of an English department staircase at the University of Pennsylvania. The department had already…
It's come to this. Facebook has been so bullied over the "fake news" narrative since the election that they're actively appointing a panel of censors to police speech on Facebook:
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Last week saw a delightfully breathless editorial in the Washington Post, followed by an even more preposterous companion piece at Politico, claiming that legislation changing how the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other U.S. government-sponsored broadcasters are organized…
Some endnotes and digressions from the latest episode of the Weekly Substandard podcast:
This was not your typical film premiere. The Bleeding Edge depicts the live-organ harvesting of religious dissidents by agents of the Chinese government and its reigning Communist Party—and the film's starring actress, human-rights activist and religious dissident Anastasia Lin was allegedly almost…
Congressional Republicans agree with Democrats that Russia's hacking of Democratic emails merits investigation. But however troubling Moscow's election-season mischief-making might have been, there's no reason to assume the results of the presidential vote itself were in any way unfair. The real…
Craig Sager, the beloved NBA broadcast reporter who won over the most uncooperative of athletes and coaches with his geniality and garb, died Thursday after a nearly three-year fight against leukemia. He was 65.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on Trump's pro-life campaign promises, and his courting of pro-life leaders.
According to a new study from the Center for Health and Economy, Obamacare premium hikes will cost taxpayers an additional $10 billion in the coming year. With rising premiums come rising subsidies.
Is the CIA, or some part of it, angry with Donald Trump? Even before the president-elect perhaps unwisely insulted the agency by citing its failures to assess correctly the status of Saddam Hussein's WMD program, someone high up at the CIA seemed to have it in for the incoming commander-in-chief.
The president-elect may be about to appoint economist and architect of the Trump tax plan Larry Kudlow chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, based on public statements from the tax plan's co-architect, economist Stephen Moore, according to the Detroit News.
The last German offensive of World War II began at 5:30 a.m. on December 16, 1944. The rank-and-file German soldier thought he was giving Paris back to the Führer for a "Christmas present." The more experienced Wehrmacht commanders knew that, even should they reach the Meuse or—more…
La La Land should have been a disaster. Every American movie musical it resembles has been. The plot of La La Land recalls Martin Scorsese's tiresome New York, New York, released in 1977; both feature a principled and snobbish jazz musician who falls in love with an overeager novice performer. Its…
Flocking. No one outside the millinery trade—ladies' haberdashery—should ever have occasion to use the word, but there it is: a category of artificial Christmas trees. You can get your tree flocked, or unflocked. Made of green nylon, like AstroTurf in the Astrodome, or made of metal, like pink…
It’s a commonplace observation, and yet somehow still a shocking one: In all of human civilization, no subject has been written and talked about more than the death of Jesus Christ. A typical subject you might study in graduate school—presidential politics, say, or the poetry of William…
Ever since his unexpected victory, the media have been obsessing over what a Donald Trump presidency will mean for a range of important issues, such as the Paris Agreement on climate change, border enforcement, the judiciary, and Obamacare repeal. But one set of crucial concerns—those that go under…
On January 12, 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivered a speech in Washington, the reverberations of which were felt on the other side of the world. Describing U.S. foreign policy objectives in Asia, a region where both China and the Soviet Union were seeking to spread Marxist-Leninist…
To be honest, The Scrapbook is nowhere near as exercised as it might be about the removal, by a gaggle of undergraduates, of William Shakespeare’s portrait from its prominent position on the wall of an English department staircase at the University of Pennsylvania. The department had already…
Having run twice, and unsuccessfully, for the presidency, Hillary Rodham Clinton is now an official object lesson in how not to run for political office. No doubt, Clinton was a subpar candidate—especially when compared with her husband—but one strike against her is manifestly unfair: that she had…
Les Liaisons dangereuses, the 1782 novel of sexual intrigue by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, has become one of the most adapted literary classics in the two decades since it was reincarnated as a hit play by the British dramatist Christopher Hampton. The 1988 Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons, a…
WHEN LARRY LINDSEY, George Bush’s top economic adviser, was asked to defend his latest upbeat economic forecast—a return to 3 percent growth by the end of the year and then clear sailing for as far as the eye can see—he cited as corroborating expert witnesses a handful of Wall Street economists who…
Who has time for history, and a guide to managing disasters of the future, when such vast, self-inflicted damage—the legacy of Obamaism, the promise of Trumpism come to mind—must be dealt with at the moment? Here's a wager: Tevi Troy's new book will do well now. It's carefully researched, well…
After a presidential election year when the word “character" was bandied all over the place—often by people possessing very little of the commodity themselves—history may have something to teach us. So readers interested in a clear definition of character, and its importance as an essential element…
The election may be over, but the arguments and recriminations are still going strong. Which brings up an interesting point. You frequently hear people say, “Now is not the time for recriminations," and you think, "Well, sure. Okay. Let's wait a while. There's plenty of time." But you never hear…
As a candidate, Donald Trump promised sweeping change in the way Washington functions. He would tell voters that the system is rigged, it’s broken, it's run by losers, and only he could fix it. And yet, for all this rhetoric, it is striking how typical his presidential appointments have been: Jeff…
Last week saw a delightfully breathless editorial in the Washington Post, followed by an even more preposterous companion piece at Politico, claiming that legislation changing how the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other U.S. government-sponsored broadcasters are organized…
Perhaps you too have been wondering why it is that President Obama is always, always telling us who we are as Americans and who we are not. Obviously, why he does this is a complicated question. And I guess “always” is an exaggeration. Frequently, though—he does it very frequently.
Fundamentally, the world of sensory experience is raw and ruthless. Chaos abounds, and events flow into one another without rhyme or reason. There are no clear beginnings or endings; no sense of triumph or despair. There is no Heaven or Hell. At its most innocent, the human mind is overwhelmed…
Donald Trump issued a “Dear Pro-Life Leader" letter in September. "As we head into the final stretch of the campaign, the help of leaders like you is essential to ensure that pro-life voters know where I stand," he said. And he was specific about what "I am committed to."
“. . . vast bureaucracies of civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil." (Winston Churchill)
Congressional Republicans agree with Democrats that Russia’s hacking of Democratic emails merits investigation. But however troubling Moscow's election-season mischief-making might have been, there's no reason to assume the results of the presidential vote itself were in any way unfair. The real…
"At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous, by…
A historian can be wise after the fact, but a political analyst must be wise before it. Most commentators failed to detect the signs of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, despite their received wisdom and psephological sensitivity. (The exception seems to have been those relying on that most…
Novelist, travel writer, essayist, and biographer Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), the 50th anniversary of whose death rolled around this year, celebrated by those survivors who had the misfortune of knowing him at all well, was as wretched and ornery a human being as anyone could be who was not actually…
On March 28, 2011, Barack Obama stood behind a presidential podium at the National Defense University and addressed the nation. His ostensible topic was Libya, and his ostensible purpose was to explain his decision to intervene there. And over the course of his 27-minute address, he did this.
How do you write about a world you have never seen? It’s a strange question for a writer of science fiction to ask, yet this was the spark that led a young Ursula K. Le Guin to Orsinia. Orsinia, "an unimportant country of middle Europe," was where, as a young writer in the early 1950s, she began to…
More than two-thirds of registered voters do not want President Obama to pardon Hillary Clinton before he leaves office next month, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday evening.
The closing reports on the Obama administration's drug policy were delivered this week. Drug-induced deaths for the year 2015 were reported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on December 8, and the youth school survey of drug use for 2016, Monitoring the Future (MTF), was just released by the…
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the Intelligence Community wasn't "particularly subtle" in its October assessment of which Russian actors could have authorized the country's hacking of U.S. election activity this year, hinting that Vladimir Putin must have somehow been involved.
Donald Trump's transition team has tapped Fox News personality Monica Crowley as "Senior Director of Strategic Communications for the National Security Council." Politico reported earlier today that Fox had terminated Crowley's contract in anticipation of her appointment.
A 10-year extension of long-standing Iran sanctions will become law without President Obama's signature, in an apparent symbolic move after both chambers of Congress passed the package by a near-unanimous margin.
The WEEKLY SUBSTANDARD Podcast where Jonathan V. Last and Victorino Matus reveal their guilty pleasure TV shows while Sonny Bunch pretends he watches nothing of the sort. Plus Jonathan gives us his take on "cruising," Sonny complains about germ-carrying children, and Vic pleads for moderation—all…
The Obama administration is facing mounting criticism that it is deliberately downplaying Iran's role in ongoing atrocities in Syria in order to avoid endangering the nuclear deal, a characterization the administration has rejected but that experts and journalists continue to wage.
Hillary Clinton could do worse than to take up the trombone.
Tom Wheeler, the Democratic chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has announced he will resign at the beginning of Donald Trump's presidential term, per Bloomberg. With Wheeler gone, Republicans will have a 2-1 majority on the FCC.
As Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria celebrates the retaking of Aleppo amidst a horrific humanitarian disaster, President Obama and his administration are increasingly taking heat for ineffective action in the face of the crisis. But just a month ago, the president seemed to suggest that if it…
The latest Fox News poll shows that Donald Trump has been growing on people since the election:
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Donald Trump is poised to shake up many policies, foreign, domestic—and, well, literally domestic—but on one issue he looks set to stick with President Obama's approach: North Korea. Joseph Yun, a State Department envoy on North Korea policy, confirmed to reporters in Seoul the other day that he…
Virginia congressman Don Beyer wants to delay the electoral college vote. Here's the Washington Post:
One of the mini-classics of the '90s was the James Brooks movie As Good as It Gets. It's about a slightly deranged writer played by Jack Nicholson and the title comes from a scene in which Nicholson's character walks out of his shrink's office into the waiting room and mischievously asks the other…
Anna Wintour, the widely feared and revered editor of Vogue, visited Trump Tower on Tuesday, according to ABC News. We cannot know for sure where her ring-kissing ranked in comparison to Kanye's—but it's safe to assume she found herself on the less familiar end of an icy awkwardness.
WEEKLY STANDARD senior editor Andrew Ferguson and Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti discuss conservatism in the era of Donald Trump with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution in this edition of the Uncommon Knowledge video series.
Elliott Abrams, writing at the Council on Foreign Relations website, argues that America has an interest in supporting democracy in the Arab world. Here's an excerpt:
A veteran intelligence official slammed the Obama administration for ignoring a range of Iran's destructive activities in order to preserve the nuclear deal, and advised the incoming Trump administration to harshly retaliate against Tehran's illicit pursuits.
Michigan Republican party chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel is slated to succeed Reince Priebus as head of the RNC next year, according to a statement from President-elect Donald Trump, after she was named deputy chair Wednesday.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior editor Andrew Ferguson on the latest in the Trump Tower audition series.
The Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate for only the second time since 2008 Wednesday, and left its economic projections mostly unchanged despite granting the uncertainty of how Donald Trump's economic policies could alter the economy and its future decision-making.
University of Pennsylvania students took down a large, centrally-located portrait of Shakespeare from the English Department to send a message of inclusivity, according to the department's chair.
Censorship was once so simple. Kings, emperors, hierarchs, dictators stifled free expression to protect their authority. They decided what ideas were dangerous; organized a network of schoolteachers, priests, and informers to sniff out expressions of these ideas; then hired policemen, judges, and…
America's favorite Glamazonian wonder goddess didn't fit in at the United Nations. She's a powerful agent unafraid to defend the free world against encroaching evils. She gets the job done and she looks good doing it.
It's the opportunity Republicans have been awaiting for six years, which invites the obvious question: Are they going to screw it up? In January, a united Republican Congress and Republican White House will finally have the ability to dispose of Obamacare, the unpopular and destructive…
The Clinton campaign of 2016 will surely go down in history as having made some of the most incredible strategic mistakes in the history of American politics. And we're still learning just how bad it was—a Politico report Wendesday morning contains this shocking detail:
Controversial FDA rules for e-cigarette producers will badly damage the growing vaping industry. The regulations, finalized in August, require that any product not on the market before 2007—when there were no vaping products available—undergo a costly retroactive application process for federal…
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After spending the entire election railing against Hillary Clinton and siphoning votes from her, Green party candidate responded to Donald Trump's victory by demanding a recount—but only in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, three states Trump narrowly won where reversing the results would…
When the U.S. Federal Marshal system was founded, its mission was to execute all lawful warrants as officers of the courts. The main association with marshals is a lone, Wild West-style lawman, like Wyatt Earp or Rooster Cogburn, but the program was started by George Washington and continues to…
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich repeatedly ripped the media for what he said was ongoing unfair coverage of President-elect Donald Trump, calling certain news outlets "propaganda" and some members of the media "idiots."
Harry Reid claims he has lost respect for Mitt Romney. It's likely Romney lost his for Reid sooner.
The Washington Post reports that last week, President-elect Donald Trump was agonizing over his shortlist of candidates for secretary of state—which included Mitt Romney, Bob Corker, Rudy Giuliani, and David Petraeus. Trump was reportedly unsatisfied with his choices when a new name, that of…
On a recent episode of the Weekly Substandard podcast, co-hosts Victorino Matus, Jonathan V. Last, and Sonny Bunch discussed their favorite Christmas movies, including 1983's A Christmas Story. While Jonathan isn't a fan of the film, millions of Americans tune in every Christmas Eve and Christmas…
Montana representative and former Navy SEAL Ryan Zinke has been selected as Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Interior Department, according to multiple reports.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on the future of U.S.-Russia relations under Trump.
The Syrian regime has established control over eastern Aleppo, a previously rebel-held section of the city, according to a top Russian official.
In the New York Times's new extensive report on the massive Russian-backed operation to hack American political and government severs—including a successful hack of the Democratic National Committee's server—the paper reveals that President Barack Obama had been "briefed regularly" on Russia's…
President-elect Trump lifted his eyes from the phone long enough to notice the man standing in his doorway. "Kanye, Kanye, come on in!" he exclaimed. "I've just been fighting all these—the media, they're so biased. Rex Tillerson, widely respected, and they're spreading lies about him. It's unfair."
The New York Times reports that former Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's email was hacked by Russian hackers because an aide mistyped a reply:
In the great and overlooked 1991 comedy Soapdish, a television executive muses on the work of his network's greatest soap opera star. "She is and will always be the Queen of Misery," he says. Well, Celeste of Soapdish has nothing on Casey Affleck of the year's most highly-praised film, Manchester…
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, a leading evangelical who served as a Donald Trump surrogate during the general election, is not happy with Trump's choice of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to serve as secretary of state. When Tillerson was CEO of Exxon, the energy company donated money…
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich lauded Donald Trump's chosen department chiefs as "what may be the smartest cabinet of modern times" Tuesday morning, hours after news broke of the president-elect's selection of Rex Tillerson for secretary of state.
Former Texas governor Rick Perry is Trump's pick for Energy Secretary, the AP reported Tuesday morning. Perry has been a clear favorite for the post among conservatives who value his anti-regulatory stance.
The regime of Bashar al-Assad has begun to take over neighborhoods in the beseiged city of Aleppo, with the Syrian authoritarian's forces killing at least 82 civilians on Monday. The New York Times reports on the atrocities:
"Voting machines in more than one-third of all Detroit precincts registered more votes than they should have during last month's presidential election, according to Wayne County records prepared at the request of The Detroit News," according to a report today in the Detroit newspaper. "Detailed…
Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, apppears to have launched a fact-free attack on a Democratic ally. Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times has the story:
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The world, and especially the nation, remembered Pearl Harbor last Wednesday. December 7 is, indeed, a day that has lived "in infamy." So the president and the man who will follow him into the White House both issued appropriate statements. A moving ceremony took place at the scene of the attack,…
The state of New York currently has some of the strictest weapons laws in America. But a statute banning most residents from possessing Tasers is now facing a federal lawsuit alleging that it violates the Second Amendment.
The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act passed the Senate in a late-night session Friday, rolling through with unanimous support. A bipartisan bill from its inception, the HEAR Act will likely become federal law and institute a universal reset of the statutes of limitation for Holocaust-era art…
Donald Trump said on Twitter Monday he would announce on Tuesday his selection for secretary of state. The New York Times reports that Trump has picked ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Here's the Times:
After saying late last month he would leave the business operations of his corporation upon taking office, President-elect Donald Trump reportedly will delay a planned public announcement with details of what he'll do with his business operations. Trump's press conference, planned for later this…
There's an old saying that "personnel is policy" in filling the top positions in an administration. More precisely, if you want a policy to be pursued and protected, hire those most committed to it.
Dear colleagues, contributors, readers, and friends:
Over seven decades, Helen Pinkerton has published a small number of poems admirable for their austere intellectual beauty, such as the newly collected "Metaphysical Song."
Ex-Democratic representative and convicted felon Chaka Fattah received a 10-year prison sentence Monday after being found guilty of federal racketeering and bribery charges earlier this year.
President-elect Trump's team is being urged to kill new Food and Drug Administration rules that threaten to snuff out the e-cigarette business and rob chainsmokers of an alternative to ending their habit.
Reports Friday that U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign to tilt the election in favor of Donald Trump have sown precisely the kind of confusion that American adversaries must have hoped for with their actions. In an effort to reach some sort of…
The White House Monday is going directly after the couch-sitting, video-game-playing consumer in an effort to boost Obamacare sign-ups before an enrollment deadline later this week. The Obama administration recruited Shaquille O'Neal, retired NBA center, to play point for the first-ever "White…
The Obama administration is downplaying Iran's role in atrocities committed by the Syrian regime in order to avoid endangering last summer's landmark nuclear deal, a top lawmaker and experts tell THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
There is hardly a member of the European Union whose past is not more prosperous, secure, expansive, and influential than its present. During every age of European civilization, someone has held the upper hand, and lost it. Perhaps thanks to the maturity that comes of rising and falling, this…
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is joining bipartisan calls for a congressional investigation into Russia's interference in the U.S. election, following an announcement that President Obama has ordered a similar such review.
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Andy Puzder, Donald Trump's nominee for Labor Secretary, is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which operates Hardee's and Carl's Jr. When attempting to foist his garbage food on the public, Puzder's company has often employed racy—if not outright sexist—advertising. (Here's an example.)
General John F. Kelly will lead the Department of Homeland Security. From the Associated Press:
China continues to seeth over Donald Trump's overtures to Taiwan. First, there was in the phone call between Trump and Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen. Now, the Washington Post reports:
Don't mistake The Scrapbook's recent silence on the subject of the mainstream media's meretricious "fact-checking" enterprise for a sign that things have improved on that front. They haven't. The "fact checks" are as biased and misleading as ever, it's just that The Scrapbook got tired of spitting…
The government of New York City is offering counseling and support services for its city workers who are feeling "distressed" or "vulnerable" following last month's elections. In an email sent to city government employees last week and obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD, a coalition of agencies…
Something to remember 75 years after Pearl Harbor: The United States Navy is the best in the world, by an order of magnitude. No other navy is remotely as powerful. There are 40 in-service aircraft carriers in the world; 19 of them are ours. (Russia has just one, and it's in bad shape.) By a…
Cruisin' Along...
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the three worst cabinet picks of all time.
Thirty-seven years is a long time to wait for a phone call. That's how it must have felt to the Taiwanese people when their president, Tsai Ing-wen, had a 10-minute talk with Donald Trump on December 2—the first direct conversation between a Taiwanese leader and a U.S. president or president-elect…
Top Republicans are pushing back on the potential appointment of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state due to the executive's ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin, throwing a potential Senate confirmation into doubt.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes talks with host Eric Felten about what a President Donald Trump can learn from the missteps and miscues of Barack Obama's approach to the presidency. Andrew Ferguson stops in to diagnose what's ailing the corporate media in the age of…
There's going to be a new sheriff in town, or as one businessman put it, "We now have to plan for the big fist in the sky." Doug Oberman, CEO of Caterpillar and chairman of the big-businessmen-only Business Roundtable told his members, "Some of us may bear our turn in the bullseye." And some…
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December 12 is a significant anniversary for the high-tech industry: 36 years ago, Congress enacted the Computer Software Copyright Act. This law ended a debate by judges and government officials that raged for more than a decade about whether software should be protected under intellectual…
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the Trump transition.
As a young boy in Canada in the 1970s I often accompanied my grandmother to her neighborhood United Church for Sunday service. The United Church is a Canadian invention. In the 1920s some of the largest and oldest Protestant churches in the country, including all the Methodists and the…
More than 1,000 Russian athletes competing in "summer, winter, and Paralympic sport" have been identified in a vast doping conspiracy tainting numerous international competitions in recent years, a finding that indicated a hijacking of global sport, the World Anti-Doping Agency's chief investigator…
Founded in 2007, the Community Security Service (CSS) is a low-profile, nonprofit organization based in New York City and concerned with protection of American Jewish institutions and public activities. CSS has trained thousands of volunteers in professional security methods, provides physical…
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
The Wall Street Journal reports that President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington to the position of Secretary of the Interior.
President Obama has ordered a review of allegations that Russia conducted a series of cyberattacks to influence the presidential election results, according to a top White House official. A spokesman later added that the investigation would include "malicious cyber activity" tied to races for the…
New York
Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky is set to go on trial in England Monday after being charged with possession of child pornography.
A U.S. district judge denied a motion to halt a recount of Wisconsin ballots cast in the presidential election Friday, while similar legal action is pending Pennsylvania and Michigan's re-tabulation was stopped this week.
The European state system, Leon Trotsky wrote in 1932, resembles "the 'system' of cages in an impoverished provincial zoo." The European Union, the ideal of postwar reconstruction, was intended to replace the tariffs, borders, and belligerence of the old Europe. With the euro currency and the "four…
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell chided the opposition for holding up last-minute spending legislation to keep the government funded beyond midnight Saturday, as a small group of Democratic senators pledged to fight the bill until they could secure a longer extension of health benefits for…
The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights may not last long in Trump's America, its employees and advocates fear. The transition's stated intention to "streamline the department," coupled with a stated goal to overturn Obama-era executive overreaches, spells trouble for the department's…
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At the Washington Free Beacon, Aaron MacLean writes about the false narratives about the state of the economy and the world under the Obama administration. MacLean suggests the alternative reality presented by Obama and propagated by a compliant media led the country to revolt against it and reject…
Ever on the lookout for irony, The Scrapbook's attention was drawn the other day to two stories—conven-iently situated next to one another—on the front page of the Washington Post Metro section. The first, entitled "D.C. readies for horde of inaugural protesters" (December 4), explained that…
CNN reports:
The Washington Post reports:
Utah's senior senator, Republican Orrin Hatch, remains popular in the Beehive State. But a poll conducted on behalf of a political action committee that seeks more conservative Senate candidates has also found voters in Utah believe the seven-term Republican should retire rather than run again in…
Until October 26, perched on the French coast of the English Channel, the "Jungle" refugee camp housed over 6,000 migrants. Living conditions were awful.
Hillary Clinton, speaking at the United States Capitol Thursday to unveil a portrait of outgoing senator Harry Reid, called "fake news" a "danger" to the country.
An essential job requirement for a government minister in a totalitarian dictatorship is a willingness to suffer endless humiliation at the hands of the supreme leader. Deng Xiaoping (1904-97) delivers a master class in the art of self-abasement, when subjected to the sadistic whims of Chairman…
It’s the opportunity Republicans have been awaiting for six years, which invites the obvious question: Are they going to screw it up? In January, a united Republican Congress and Republican White House will finally have the ability to dispose of Obamacare, the unpopular and destructive…
Vogue magazine and the drab world of politics are not much alike. They are prose vs. poetry, fact vs. fiction, words vs. music, dreams vs. the cold light of day. Politics is mundane and essential to the running of everything; Vogue is escape and essential to nothing, dealing in luxuries that would…
New York
For years now, the Republican party has promised to “repeal and replace" Obamacare. Now that voters have delivered Republicans control of the White House and Congress and they can make good on that promise, suddenly they are singing a different, decidedly off-key, tune: "Repeal and delay."
In the great and overlooked 1991 comedy Soapdish, a television executive muses on the work of his network’s greatest soap opera star. "She is and will always be the Queen of Misery," he says. Well, Celeste of Soapdish has nothing on Casey Affleck of the year's most highly-praised film, Manchester…
There is hardly a member of the European Union whose past is not more prosperous, secure, expansive, and influential than its present. During every age of European civilization, someone has held the upper hand, and lost it. Perhaps thanks to the maturity that comes of rising and falling, this…
Hillary Clinton could do worse than to take up the trombone.
"I bear the creature no ill-will,” William Hazlitt wrote of a spider in his 1826 essay, "On the Pleasure of Hating."
Over seven decades, Helen Pinkerton has published a small number of poems admirable for their austere intellectual beauty, such as the newly collected “Metaphysical Song."
Don’t mistake The Scrapbook's recent silence on the subject of the mainstream media's meretricious "fact-checking" enterprise for a sign that things have improved on that front. They haven't. The "fact checks" are as biased and misleading as ever, it's just that The Scrapbook got tired of spitting…
Shortly after his inauguration in 2009, President Obama invited Republican leaders in Congress to a White House meeting. The House members brought a proposal with ideas for stimulating the economy, then suffering through the Great Recession. In the meeting, Eric Cantor, then the House minority…
With his aggressive executive action on immigration, President Obama has struck a constitutional nerve in the body politic. The first lawsuit challenging the president’s action was filed last week by a coalition of 18 states led by Texas. Oklahoma is about to file, and other states may do so as…
New York
Speaking of media credibility, The Scrapbook itself has screwed up, for which we are very sorry. But we are grateful to Theresa M. Towner, professor of literary studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, for her gracious letter of reproval. She noted that “Knock, Knock, Knocking," an item in our…
The European state system, Leon Trotsky wrote in 1932, resembles “the 'system' of cages in an impoverished provincial zoo." The European Union, the ideal of postwar reconstruction, was intended to replace the tariffs, borders, and belligerence of the old Europe. With the euro currency and the "four…
Thirty-seven years is a long time to wait for a phone call. That’s how it must have felt to the Taiwanese people when their president, Tsai Ing-wen, had a 10-minute talk with Donald Trump on December 2—the first direct conversation between a Taiwanese leader and a U.S. president or president-elect…
When the new casts out the old, an incoming administration has the opportunity to review its predecessor’s approach to the Central Intelligence Agency. When this is done, the focus is usually on the ethics of Langley and politically disturbing covert action. The Obama administration was…
The world, and especially the nation, remembered Pearl Harbor last Wednesday. December 7 is, indeed, a day that has lived “in infamy." So the president and the man who will follow him into the White House both issued appropriate statements. A moving ceremony took place at the scene of the attack,…
Censorship was once so simple. Kings, emperors, hierarchs, dictators stifled free expression to protect their authority. They decided what ideas were dangerous; organized a network of schoolteachers, priests, and informers to sniff out expressions of these ideas; then hired policemen, judges, and…
Protectionism, I once said to Irving Kristol, is a bad idea. It benefits producers, but it harms consumers. “Where," he asked, "is it written that the welfare of consumers takes precedence over that of producers?" Reflection required, not a new experience after an encounter with Irving. And in this…
Ever on the lookout for irony, The Scrapbook’s attention was drawn the other day to two stories—conven-iently situated next to one another—on the front page of the Washington Post Metro section. The first, entitled "D.C. readies for horde of inaugural protesters" (December 4), explained that…
Retired Marine general John Kelly, Donald Trump's selection for Secretary of Homeland Security, is likely to bring a tough-on-drugs mentality to that department. Kevin Baron, the executive editor at Defense One, explains:
World War II and Korean War pilot, Mercury Seven astronaut, and former United States Senator John Glenn died Thursday at an Ohio State University medical center in Columbus. He was 95 years old.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with online editor Michael Warren on the retirement of the controversial Democratic leader.
Americans have an "obligation" to give President-elect Donald Trump a chance to show what he can do, Vice-President Joe Biden said Wednesday during an impromptu stop at a Delaware state celebration on the U.S. Capitol grounds.
We shall not shock anyone, we shall merely expose ourselves to good-natured or at any rate harmless ridicule, if we acknowledge that we were startled, in our callow youth, by a suggestion from a professor. The comment came from Adam Ulam, the distinguished scholar of Soviet foreign policy. In…
Harry Reid is bidding the Senate farewell today. Back in 2013, Michael Warren profiled the senator, whom he called a "small man in a big job."
Reviews and News:
Florida senator Marco Rubio introduced a bill on Tuesday that aims to help Puerto Rico's struggling economy with a "wage enhancement" plan.
New test results place American high schoolers well below their global contemporaries in mathematical literacy. The Program for International Assessment 2015 scores, released Tuesday, confirm a downward trend that appears to track the rocky implementation of the Common Core State Standards.
Lawmakers will crack down on business with Iran under the Trump administration, warning interested companies that they could wind up funding illicit Iranian activities and slapping sanctions on entities linked to Iran's military, according to a leading House Republican.
Growing up in mitte middle-class New Jersey, I spent much of my adolescence riddled with an unbecoming status anxiety. I was forever worried that not having the right clothes, or the right backpack, or the right sunglasses, would mark me as not belonging to the smart set. The fact that there was no…
Portland, Oregon, will penalize companies whose pay schemes its city council disapproves of. From the New York Times:
American life expectancy has fallen for the first time since 1993. Here's the Washington Post:
Just a week after saying he would leave the operations of his business upon taking office, President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly considering maintaining a financial interest in the company. The New York Times reports:
Liberals and the environmental left have gone into a tizzy over the selection of Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt as Donald Trump's pick to head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
President-elect Donald Trump selected Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to be his EPA administrator Wednesday. Since taking office in 2011, the 48-year-old Republican has found himself at odds with Washington, D.C., on issues ranging from Obamacare to overreach from the very agency he has been…
On Monday, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of reporters at the Capitol, "I'm going to run in 2020."
Radio host Dennis Prager will appear on the Washington Examiner's Facebook live program Wednesday afternoon at 3:00 ET. Watch the program here.
Hurd's Bank, July 2015
The world's biggest basketball star, LeBron James, says his decision to stay elsewhere than the Trump SoHo hotel with his teammates on a road trip in New York City is not an attempt "to make a statement," but rather a matter of taste.
"There's a massive problem with their logic," Shihan Qu told an audience, two years ago, about the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission's attempt to ban his product, Zen Magnets. Two days before Thanksgiving, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Qu and smacked the regulatory agency…
John Kelly, the retired Marine general who most recently was the head of U.S. Southern Command, is Donald Trump's selection for Secretary of Homeland Security. CBS News reports:
The Huffington Post polling database shows that Donald Trump has shaken his longstanding unfavorable ratings following his election victory.
The 15 percent of American adults who still smoke cigarettes despite the well-known damage to their lungs, throats and lifespans are, it's fairly safe to assume, the stubbornest brand loyalists alive. And yet Philip Morris International (PMI), the maker of Marlboro, claims it's their new corporate…
Reviews and News:
Writing at National Journal, Josh Kraushaar suggests Democrats' far-left policies on energy and the environment have been a problem for the party at the ballot box. There are even some Democratic politicos, Kraushaar reports, who are discussing pulling back from the party's hard line on energy…
Donald Trump will name Iowa governor Terry Branstad his ambassador to China, reports Bloomberg. Here's the story:
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
The son of Donald Trump's pick for national security advisor was fired from the Trump transition team for publicly embracing a conspiracy theory. Michael G. Flynn, whose father is retired Lt. General Mike Flynn, is "no longer involved" with the transition, spokesman Jason Miller told reporters on a…
In the months since the passage of PROMESA and the implementation of Congress' Federal Oversight Board, Puerto Rico's woefully underfunded pension systems have taken center stage in discussions concerning the island's fiscal reform. While there is no disputing that the Commonwealth's pension plans…
President-elect Donald Trump introduced his selection for Secretary of Defense, retired Marine general James Mattis, at his Tuesday night rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Mattis, known by his nickname of "Mad Dog", joined Trump briefly on stage.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol, live from the TWS Cruise in the Caribbean, on the future of the conservative movement and the latest on the Trump transition.
Some conservatives have criticized the deal the incoming Trump administration struck with Carrier to keep several hundred manufacturing jobs in Indiana as "crony capitalism," but Texas senator Ted Cruz had nothing but praise for Trump when asked about the deal on Tuesday.
Top Democratic lawmakers are challenging the Obama administration's decision to keep a range of unclassified documents related to the Iran nuclear deal away from the public eye, amid mounting calls from Trump insiders and Republican lawmakers urging the incoming Trump administration to release the…
New Jersey governor Chris Christie has reached an historical low for gubernatorial approval ratings taken by a renowned pollster, plunging below 20 percent for a mark not seen in more than 20 years of surveys.
Ohio governor John Kasich has asked presidential electors not to cast votes for him later this month, a response to news that a group of Democratic Electoral College members was planning to back him when they gather December 19.
Federal prosecutors want 17 to 21 years of prison time for former Pennsylvania representative Chaka Fattah, the 11-term Democrat who was convicted on federal racketeering and bribery charges in June.
Missouri governor-elect Eric Greitens preached a message of forgiveness and unity Tuesday after his wife was robbed at gunpoint the day before outside a St. Louis coffee shop. Greitens's wife, Sheena, was unharmed, and three teenagers are now in custody in relation to the incident.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story comes to theaters December 16, and in this episode of the Weekly Substandard Podcast, Vic and Jonathan discuss their favorite Star Wars toys (only one of them owned an AT-AT). Meanwhile, Jonathan and Sonny compare Alderaan to...Hiroshima? Help us, Bill Kristol, you're…
Vote totals in states where former presidential candidate Jill Stein and the Green party have requested recounts hadn't budged much as of Tuesday morning, the Associated Press reports, with the process in Michigan still in its nascent staged amid a flurry of court action.
Upon the death of Fidel Castro last month, President Obama remarked, "History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him." The statement was cowardly in striving for judicious balance to describe the legacy of a dictator who jailed and…
A leading House Democrat called on his party to reconsider its political strategy ahead of the 2018 elections and praised incoming president Donald Trump for making a "smart" political decision by convincing an American manufacturer to keep some jobs in the United States. Adam Schiff, an eight-term…
Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado, has an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal:
The dream of developing the next best mousetrap, selling it, and then retiring or moving on to create the next big thing is part and parcel of the American vision of success. Strong intellectual property rights are critical to protecting innovation—protections were enshrined in Article 1, Section 8…
Reviews and News:
John O'Hara was wont to complain publicly about the state of his reputation, thereby joining the majority of writers, most of whom keep this standard complaint to themselves. What, exactly, apart from being insufficiently grand to please him, was his reputation?
For weeks, protesters in the thousands have been have been playing a tense waiting game with police on the banks of the Missouri River an hour south of Bismarck, North Dakota. The protesters gained a partial victory on Sunday, when Jo-Ellen Darcy, the Army's assistant secretary for civil works,…
Republican members of Congress have introduced companion resolutions urging the newly opened Smithsonian musem of African-American history to include the achievements of Justice Clarence Thomas, the second (and currently only) black member of the Supreme Court.
For more than six years, the Internal Revenue Service has been trying to fend off accusations that its process for granting tax-exempt status discriminated against applicants expressing political views at odds with those of the Obama administration. This discrimination against political viewpoints…
Retired Marine general John Kelly is Donald Trump's leading pick to become the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, reports Eliana Johnson at Politico:
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam performed at Carnegie Hall last week under Russian-American conductor Semyon Bychkov. Because the venue is so well known and the performers are so good and the seats so expensive and hard to get, Carnegie's programmers are rather blasé on the question…
George Will writes:
A man sentenced to 30 years in prison Monday for plotting an ISIS-inspired assault on the U.S. Capitol defiantly shouted that Allah, not the presiding judge, was "in control" as he was escorted out of a federal district courtroom in Cincinnati.
French and German do not have words that correspond exactly with the English noun "mind," which emphasizes reason (it's derived from the Greek menos and Latin mentis). Before the 18th century, few people on the Continent read English, and when "mind" appeared in French translations, it usually…
Former vice president Al Gore met with President-elect Donald Trump Monday at Trump Tower, according to the transition pool report. The former Tennessee senator and 2000 Democratic nominee for president was expected to meet with Trump's daughter Ivanka, but Gore also says he spoke with Trump.
A fight over several of Donald Trump's cabinet selections is brewing in the Senate before the 115th Congress even convenes, a development that one Democratic senator who is often at odds with his party calls "BS".
North Carolina governor Pat McCrory conceded defeat Monday in his reelection battle against Democrat Roy Cooper, bringing a razor-thin contest that had been extended by a recount process to a close.
In its Great Battles series, Oxford University Press has published studies of Waterloo, Gallipoli, Alamein, Agincourt, and Hattin—the battle Saladin won that enabled him to recapture Jerusalem from the Crusaders. The latest entry in this series focuses on the Battle of Culloden, which took place on…
From the Foundation for Constitutional Government:
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Donald Trump will make Ben Carson his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Austrians have rejected a far-right presidential candidate. From the Wall Street Journal:
Hours after Fidel Castro's state funeral ended a national mourning in Cuba, a small but intent crowd gathered at the Victims of Communism Memorial in downtown Washington, D.C. Dissidents like Sirley Ávila León and advocates from Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation led mourners on a Sunday…
The Italian prime minister will resign. Reuters has more:
The greatest painting in Paris is not the Mona Lisa. It's a different portrait by a different renaissance master, conveniently located only a hundred feet away from the Mona Lisa, in an adjacent Louvre gallery. It's Rafael's Baldassare Castiglione.
When Hillary Clinton lost the election nearly four weeks ago, one of my graduate school professors ran her concession speech live during my international law class (the United Nations is supreme; universal healthcare is a right; George W. Bush is bad; etc.). His choice didn't bother me…
The alt-right movement, relatively minuscule but outsized in the media coverage it has received before and since Donald Trump's election, is the latest iteration of America's dalliance with identity politics. So writes WEEKLY STANDARD senior editor Christopher Caldwell in the New York Times. Here's…
A certain type of American always got along well with Fidel Castro. Jesse Jackson was exactly that type—left-wing, ambitious, publicity-conscious. He and Castro could do business together. And in 1984, they did.
Dear Readers,
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday ripped last summer's landmark nuclear deal with Iran and said he would work with president-elect Donald Trump to remedy its shortcomings.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Michael Warren joins host Eric Felten to report on Capitol Hill strategizing about how to repeal and replace the (un-)Affordable Care Act. Ethan Epstein comes by to send off Fidel Castro with a Bronx cheer.
It was not a great year for McDonald's in 2004. The company was still recovering from a sales slump and management crisis when a comedian/political activist named Morgan Spurlock released a documentary (Super Size Me) in which he filmed himself consuming three McDonald's meals a day for one month,…
In 1953, a young Fidel Castro was tried for his armed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The attack was a dismal failure, though its date—July 26—was later taken as the name of Castro's revolutionary movement. At the trial 24…
You have to figure out, after a tough loss, how you are going to handle it. It has to hurt, but it is probably better if you don't let it show and, instead, heed these lines from Yeats:
Did Donald Trump just set the stage for World War III?
Editor William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, where he discusses Trump's "Carrier-nomics;' Is "Mad Dog" Mattis the top Trump pick so far?; and the HGTV Chip and Joanna Gaines "controversy" shows the Left still hasn't learned the lesson of 2016.
2016 had been a tough year for Taiwan, the jewel of an island nation that China views as an illegitimate breakaway province. In January, it elected a new president–a progressive female law professor who takes a decidedly dim view of the Communist tyranny a few hundred miles from Taiwan's shores.…
Reviews and News:
In preparation for an interview with Dustin Hoffman that never happened, I went to see Kung Fu Panda 3. This is something I would not have done unless I was preparing to interview the great American actor.
Among the many offenses that modern architecture has committed against Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Washington—America's main street, we like to call it—is a glass 'n' stone 'n' steel box that houses a museum about news gathering called, unfortunately, the Newseum. Funded by the New York Times,…
Tiger Woods, like he has been so many times in the last 15 months away from the PGA Tour, was alone on Friday. His playing partner in the Hero World Challenge—Tiger's event in many respects, from his hosting, his foundation's sponsorship, and his first event since last August—withdrew before the…
The Trump win was supposed to sink the economy. Instead, things—at least so far—seem to be looking up. And so a new media narrative has just been launched: If Donald Trump succeeds, it will be because President Barack Obama gave him such a great push. How else to explain the near simultaneous…
Donald Trump has three big problems, two of his own creation, one created by a ticking time bomb that Obama is leaving for him.
On Friday, Donald Trump became the first president-elect to speak to the leader of Taiwan since 1979. As the Financial Times notes, Trump's call could anger the Communist Chinese regime in Beijing:
Congressional Republicans criticized announcements from the White House and Pentagon in support of a controversial amendment to expand the draft to include young women Friday, even though the amendment had already been removed from annual legislation setting defense policy.
At National Review, Neal Freeman interviews our very own Philip Terzian, detailing his tenure as literary editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:
Irving Kristol famously wrote in 1978 that we might offer "two cheers for capitalism"—an insight borrowed from E.M. Forster's similar suggestion about democracy. The phrase is a call for restraint among supporters of free-market economics. Kristol himself said he and his fellow neoconservative…
History matters, except to politicians.
Republican governors are reaffirming their faith in the electoral process despite claims from President-elect Donald Trump that millions of unlawfully cast ballots cost him the popular vote, according to statements provided to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Matthew Continetti, writing in the Washington Free Beacon, argues that Donald Trump's cabinet picks so far aren't a betrayal of his promise to "drain the swamp" in Washington—they're a confirmation of it. Read an excerpt below:
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The Scrapbook has slowly begun to grow accustomed to the idea that Donald Trump—Donald Trump!—is going to be sworn in next month as president of the United States. What we continue to be shocked by is how out of touch the entire Democratic party appears to be. Had we understood just how clueless…
It's hard to make a bad Howard Hughes movie, but Warren Beatty has pulled it off with Rules Don't Apply, the first movie he's directed in 18 years and the first movie in which he's acted in 15. He is being treated kindly by the press for this calamity of a motion picture, for which there is no…
Chip and Joanna Gaines are at the height of their popularity. They host the well-liked remodeling show Fixer Upper on HGTV, have a bestselling book, and recently appeared on the cover of People. They are also devout Christians from Waco, Texas, so it was probably just a matter of time before the…
On Monday, the New York Times published a characteristically invidious column by former president Jimmy Carter calling on his lame-duck successor, Barack Obama, to recognize a Palestinian state. Intelligent observers have already picked apart the article itself, which has plenty to say about…
The New York Times's Jonathan Martin reports that congressman Keith Ellison is "facing increasingly vocal resistance" from influential groups within the party over the Minnesotan's effort to become Democratic National Committee chairman. That resistance apparently includes Jewish organizations like…
Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, says she would support the man she defeated in 2012, Scott Brown, if Donald Trump nominates the former Republican senator to head the Department of Veterans Affairs. Politico reports:
When Donald Trump takes office in January he's promised a long list of executive orders and federal regulations he'll unwind or eliminate. And if he wants to avoid another economic meltdown driven by the housing market, he should rapidly start undoing the regulatory misapplication of the Community…
Top aides for the presidential campaigns for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were involved in heated and emotional exchanges during a quadrennial forum at Harvard University's Institute of Politics. The Washington Post reports:
Donald Trump's selection for defense secretary once made a cross-country road trip that stopped at the homes of many families of fallen servicemembers. Read more from ABC News on General James Mattis's trip, which he took shortly after he retired from the Marine Corps after 41 years of service:
Donald Trump held a rally in Cincinnati Thursday to begin what's been dubbed the president-elect's "Thank You" tour.
John O'Hara was wont to complain publicly about the state of his reputation, thereby joining the majority of writers, most of whom keep this standard complaint to themselves. What, exactly, apart from being insufficiently grand to please him, was his reputation?
On the night in November 2010 that a wave of protest enabled Republicans to capture an additional 63 seats in the House of Representatives and decisively retake the majority, incoming House speaker John Boehner warned Barack Obama that the public had sent a message to “change course." Boehner…
A certain type of American always got along well with Fidel Castro. Jesse Jackson was exactly that type—left-wing, ambitious, publicity-conscious. He and Castro could do business together. And in 1984, they did.
Growing up in mitte middle-class New Jersey, I spent much of my adolescence riddled with an unbecoming status anxiety. I was forever worried that not having the right clothes, or the right backpack, or the right sunglasses, would mark me as not belonging to the smart set. The fact that there was no…
In preparation for an interview with Dustin Hoffman that never happened, I went to see Kung Fu Panda 3. This is something I would not have done unless I was preparing to interview the great American actor.
Chip and Joanna Gaines are at the height of their popularity. They host the well-liked remodeling show Fixer Upper on HGTV, have a bestselling book, and recently appeared on the cover of People. They are also devout Christians from Waco, Texas, so it was probably just a matter of time before the…
We shall not shock anyone, we shall merely expose ourselves to good-natured or at any rate harmless ridicule, if we acknowledge that we were startled, in our callow youth, by a suggestion from a professor. The comment came from Adam Ulam, the distinguished scholar of Soviet foreign policy. In…
In 1953, a young Fidel Castro was tried for his armed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The attack was a dismal failure, though its date—July 26—was later taken as the name of Castro's revolutionary movement. At the trial 24…
French and German do not have words that correspond exactly with the English noun “mind," which emphasizes reason (it's derived from the Greek menos and Latin mentis). Before the 18th century, few people on the Continent read English, and when "mind" appeared in French translations, it usually…
Cannon Ball, N.D.
In his early twenties, David Hume (1711-1776), who is regarded by many observers as Britain’s greatest philosopher, studied law and worked briefly for a Bristol merchant, but he soon decided he wanted to be a man of letters. Instead of moving to London and becoming a journalist—the usual path for…
It was not a great year for McDonald’s in 2004. The company was still recovering from a sales slump and management crisis when a comedian/political activist named Morgan Spurlock released a documentary (Super Size Me) in which he filmed himself consuming three McDonald's meals a day for one month,…
You have to figure out, after a tough loss, how you are going to handle it. It has to hurt, but it is probably better if you don’t let it show and, instead, heed these lines from Yeats:
"There’s a massive problem with their logic," Shihan Qu told an audience, two years ago, about the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission's attempt to ban his product, Zen Magnets. Two days before Thanksgiving, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Qu and smacked the regulatory agency…
In its Great Battles series, Oxford University Press has published studies of Waterloo, Gallipoli, Alamein, Agincourt, and Hattin—the battle Saladin won that enabled him to recapture Jerusalem from the Crusaders. The latest entry in this series focuses on the Battle of Culloden, which took place on…
Upon the death of Fidel Castro last month, President Obama remarked, “History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him." The statement was cowardly in striving for judicious balance to describe the legacy of a dictator who jailed and…
Among the many offenses that modern architecture has committed against Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Washington—America's main street, we like to call it—is a glass 'n' stone 'n' steel box that houses a museum about news gathering called, unfortunately, the Newseum. Funded by the New York Times,…
A crime report in the Philadelphia Inquirer last week caught The Scrapbook’s eye:
It’s hard to make a bad Howard Hughes movie, but Warren Beatty has pulled it off with Rules Don't Apply, the first movie he's directed in 18 years and the first movie in which he's acted in 15. He is being treated kindly by the press for this calamity of a motion picture, for which there is no…
The predictable furor over President Obama’s executive order offering relief to approximately 5 million undocumented immigrants has obscured the fact that his initiative is much bolder in form than in content. Obama has gone to extraordinary lengths to offer less than what immigrant advocates have…
Hurd's Bank, July 2015
The Scrapbook has slowly begun to grow accustomed to the idea that Donald Trump—Donald Trump!—is going to be sworn in next month as president of the United States. What we continue to be shocked by is how out of touch the entire Democratic party appears to be. Had we understood just how clueless…
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior editor Andrew Ferguson on the Trump transition chaos, and how it compares to that of Nixon's transition to power.
Contributing editor Elliott Abrams joined editor William Kristol on the latest installment of Conversations with Bill Kristol to discuss the death of dictator Fidel Castro, his repressive history, how the left has romanticized it, and how the Trump administration might handle relations with Cuba.
The Washington Post's Dan Lamothe reports:
Keith Ellison, currently the most prominent name being floated as the next head of the Democratic National Committee, has long faced criticism for his connections to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, as well as other anti-Semitic individuals. Recent scrutiny of Ellison's past associations…
Several years ago, the American Medical Association supported Obamacare. But on Wednesday, it decided to support a noted opponent of the law for a key government position: Georgia representative Tom Price, who Donald Trump has selected to be Secretary of Health and Human Services in his…
Senate Democrats and Republicans voted overwhelmingly to renew sanctions on Iran for 10 years Thursday, despite attempts by the Obama administration to stymie Congress.
The Obama administration's income-driven repayment program will cost more than twice as much as the Department of Education initially thought it would, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
French president Francois Hollande will not seek reelection next year, he said Thursday, becoming the first incumbent in decades not to seek a second term.
Retiring Indiana senator Dan Coats is under consideration to be President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Director of National Intelligence, according to a report and confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by a source with knowledge of the situation.
It seems only appropriate, in Merrie England, that the lighthearted humor of a very British cartoon canine brightens the mornings of newspaper readers each day. Fred Basset first appeared in the Daily Mail on July 9, 1963. The philosophical basset hound, his nameless middle-aged owners, and…
On Wednesday, a different Castro was in the news: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary Julián Castro decreed that all 3,100 local Public Housing Agencies must implement "smoke-free" policies for all indoor dwellings within the next 18 months. In essence, by late 2018, smoking…
The Society of Jesus was founded in 1540. Its members, the Jesuits, famous for their brilliance, courage, and missionary zeal, were also suspected across Europe, over the next 200 years, of Machiavellian politicking. In 1773, Pope Clement XIV abolished the order, but Pius VII restored it toward the…
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I want to share a fantastic Bloomberg Businessweek piece on the Medallion Fund by Katherine Burton.
The Obama administration has determined that enabling the sale of aircraft and other materials to an Iranian airline sanctioned for ferrying weapons on behalf of Iran's military does not undermine its foreign policy goals, according to communications with Congress obtained exclusively by THE WEEKLY…