January 2017

"An old pro told me that originality does not consist of saying what has never been said before; it consists of saying what you have to say that you know to be the truth."— Harvey Penick

In mid-October, when it seemed likely that Democrats would win the White House and a Senate majority, retiring Senate minority leader Harry Reid said that Senate Democrats would scrap the 60-vote hurdle for Hillary Clinton's Supreme Court nominee, just as they had done in 2013 for lower-court and…

For years now this magazine has been arguing that civil service reform is a necessary condition for fixing a myriad of America's problems. When the IRS starts politically targeting people and the VA's incompetence is killing veterans, and both are almost entirely resistant to the efforts by…

Former president Barack Obama just couldn't help himself. Barely a week out of office, he inserted himself into the fray. He gave his benediction to the protests against President Donald Trump's executive order on travel. "President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in…

West Virginia senator Joe Manchin said he won't block President Donald Trump's choice to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, who is scheduled to be announced Tuesday evening.

Democrats on the Senate's education panel toed the line Tuesday morning, bringing along a fighting spirit with their votes against Betsy DeVos's nomination to lead the Department of Education. As foretold, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee recommended her confirmation to…

A report in a Mexican newspaper earlier this month suggested that, as part of a mooted NAFTA re-negotiation, the Trump administration may offer to help Mexico bulk up border security along its southern frontier with Guatemala.

Former labor secretary Elaine Chao won confirmation to lead the Department of Transportation on Tuesday, sailing through the Senate by a wide bipartisan margin of 93 to 6.

Top Democratic lawmakers are calling for strong action in response to Iranian ballistic missile activity after Tehran conducted another test-fire over the weekend, its first since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, according to statements provided to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Multiple legal experts have criticized former acting Attorney General Sally Yates for allowing her personal views of President Trump's executive order on refugees and travel to the United States to interfere with the Justice Department's role of defending what is lawful.

A weekend Wall Street Journal story examines the interior design trend of maximalism, roughly defined as, if it has the properties of matter, screw it (and hang it up):

Part of why Obamacare is so unpopular is that it is neglects the typical American. As Republicans deliberate over an alternative to Obamacare, this provides a huge opening.

Reviews and News:

There is a great American novel almost nobody has read: Theodore Dreiser's The Titan. It concerns a visionary man of business named Frank Cowperwood, and it's the story of how he helps turn Chicago into a major city by commandeering and then building its mass-transit system. Cowperwood is a…

Hot on the heels of 1984, Sinclair Lewis's speculative satire It Can't Happen Here is surging to the forefront of a suddenly very popular genre, prophetic dystopian lit. It Can't Happen Here will probably be the next novel to sell out on Amazon; right now, it's the number-two recommended read by…

Daniel Barenboim is at Carnegie Hall with the Staatskapelle Berlin conducting a Bruckner Symphony Cycle. So all is well with the world, except for the choice of music. Which is only to say that, of the three composers famous for writing nine symphonies, Bruckner would be our third choice. But I was…

"Apple would not exist without immigration," warns Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. His colleagues in the board rooms of Silicon Valley agree, and tremble at the rumored issuance of a Trump executive order that might reduce the number of H-1B visas issued to skilled foreign workers. These titans of the…

It was a difficult weekend for the Trump administration as it sought to implement and defend its most controversial executive order to date, the travel ban. Fortunately for Trump, there's a chance to reset from the executive order fiasco with Tuesday night's announcement of his nominee for the…

President Donald Trump has relieved Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who instructed DOJ employees not to defend his executive order on halting entry by immigrants to the United States from certain countries.

Acting attorney general Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, has ordered DOJ attorneys not to defend President Trump's controversial executive order which temporarily bans those from seven countries, from entering the country. The countries were chosen as part of the Visa Waiver…

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer announced Monday he will vote no on the confirmation of five additional nominees to President Trump's cabinet, adding to his list of Betsy DeVos, Rex Tillerson, and Jeff Sessions as individuals he would oppose.

The White House will neither confirm nor deny reports that Homeland Security secretary John Kelly was not briefed beforehand on last Friday's executive order banning travel from citizens of seven Muslim countries.

More than a few commentators have analogized Donald Trump's election to that of Andrew Jackson: anti-establishment, populist, and rooted in a grassroots anger against existing Washington ways and policies. And more than a few commentators have called Donald Trump's tweets and media blasts a…

Tuesday's Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee vote on Education secretary-designate Betsy "Cruella" DeVos will most assuredly fall along party lines. With a Republican majority weighing in her favor, every remaining Democrat, according to Minnesota senator Al Franken, (and every…

Former President George H.W. Bush was discharged from a Houston hospital Monday after being treated for pneumonia.

Before he teed it up on the first hole at Torrey Pines, Tiger Woods had not played serious, competitive, tournament golf for some 17 months. Five hundred and twenty-two days, to be precise. So nobody—probably least of all, Tiger—was certain just how it would go for him at the Farmers Insurance…

Spencer Ackerman at the Guardian has the story of several Iraqis who served alongside American troops in the Iraq war who now find themselves caught in limbo (or worse) as a result of President Trump's executive order restricting travel from seven Muslim-majority nations, including Iraq:

Back when the Apollo astronauts were feted as heroes for pushing out into other worlds, a hero of another breed landed in Washington to be recognized for his high service to this one. Sir Kenneth Clark (1903-1983), the eminent British art historian, was invited to the National Gallery to accept a…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the West Wing's best and worst flacks.

In between keeping tabs on the Trump administration's mess-up over its executive order on immigration, I spent some time over the weekend reading. I don't have the best track record with New Year's resolutions, but so far I'm ahead of schedule on my plan to read the complete works of Shakespeare.…

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In the final week of the Obama administration, the Treasury Department made unannounced payments totaling $375 million to Dow Chemical and Boeing to reimburse the two Department of Energy (DOE) contractors for judgments awarded in the 2016 settlement of a lawsuit dating all the way back to 1990. A…

Shortly after noon on January 20, America's newly installed president issued a declaration of war against global free trade. "We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great…

Trafalgar Square sits in the center of London, just north of the Palace of Westminster. It was christened to celebrate Horatio Lord Nelson's annihilation of the combined French and Spanish fleets off Spain's Cape Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars. Nelson's victory cemented British naval…

What did the Trump administration know about Friday's "extreme vetting" executive order, and when did they know it?

Top Republican lawmakers are distancing themselves from President Donald Trump's executive order to temporarily bar entry into the United States for citizens from seven countries and refugees, amid confusion over the order's scope and implementation.

The White House seems to be backing away from aspects of President Trump's executive order on immigration. Chief of staff Reince Priebus explained Sunday morning that green card holders from the seven countries specified in the order—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—would not be…

In a joint statement issued Sunday, Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona expressed concern that Donald Trump's temporary ban on individuals from seven Middle Eastern and North African countries from entering the United States would prohibit the Iraqi military from…

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Michael Warren comes back from the White House to tell us whether the Trump team have figured out where their offices are yet. Then, Jeffrey Anderson joins host Eric Felten to talk about the unfolding strategy to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Donald Trump issued an executive order Friday suspending the U.S. refugee program for 120 days and barring U.S. entry for 90 days for people from seven countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. Trump's order also states that after the refugee program restarts, Syrian refugees…

Over at National Review, Andrew McCarthy writes that President Trump's executive order instituting a temporary ban on entry into the United States for foreign nationals from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen is statutorily and constitutionally sound:

Reaction to President Trump's executive order restricting travel into the United States from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia continued through the weekend with several Republican congressmen and senators voicing their opposition to the policy.

Sports Good, Politics Bad

Not a one Democratic Senator will vote to confirm Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos. Or so Minnesota senator Al Franken told Rachel Maddow Thursday night.

Friday's edition of the indispensable Inside Higher Ed brings news of the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, just in case you were wondering. According to Colleen Flaherty's report, an air of apprehension hangs over the event, which is being held, where else,…

Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, on the highlights—and less than highlights—of the first week of the Trump Era.

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He means it. The President of the United States of America Donald Trump says he will use the power of his office to tear up the post-WWII international and domestic settlements. No more world policeman, spending blood and treasure to protect nations that won't defend themselves. No more…

Republican senators are threatening to codify sanctions against the Kremlin amid speculation that President Donald Trump will ease the sanctions and refusal from the Trump team to commit to maintaining or increasing them.

To set the scene of the man who was on the stage: It's early April 1966, and for three days, Otis Redding is in residence at Los Angeles's Whisky A Go Go. He is far from his Chitlin' Circuit base back in the South, playing a club that would be at the epicenter of rock's psychedelic movement, where…

In the pre-dawn hours (stateside) on Sunday January 29, arguably the two greatest players in tennis history will take the court in the Australian Open final. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the only two men to have claimed at least 14 grand slam singles titles while winning each of the four slams,…

An elementary lesson of life is that systems are often invented by geniuses but usually administrated by less gifted individuals. This explains a lot about zero-tolerance policies in schools, prosecutorial discretion, and other topics of recurring interest. The best-known example, in popular…

House speaker Paul Ryan took note Friday that now is "the first time in a while" Congress and the White House have been like-minded on advancing pro-life causes.

Every January, Davos Man, that semi-mythical hominid whose natural habitat is the club lounges of major airports, migrates to his eponymous Swiss Alps resort for the World Economic Forum. There, he huddles in a warm cave of mutual congratulation. Last week, the usual avalanche of glib optimism came…

The fourth quarter economic growth numbers are in, and they are ugly:

Today, on the day of the annual March for Life, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has reintroduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. LifeNews reports:

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

The work of THE WEEKLY STANDARD was briefly interrupted when a handful of Greenpeace stuntivists mounted a crane on a neighboring construction site, unfurled a banner, and then dangled in the air for several hours. Our office window had a perfect view of the pranksters as their banner folded in on…

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Retiring sports broadcaster Brent Musburger appeared on NBC Sports's The Dan Patrick Show Thursday and went on an amusing tangent about one of his former colleagues, Keith Olbermann.

Being bumped from the partners list for the Women's March on Washington was "one of the best things that ever happened in my career," said Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, founder of the pro-life feminist organization New Wave Feminists. Blatant hypocrisy on the part of the inclusive movement's…

Doctors are divided over whether to keep the individual mandate that compels Americans to purchase health insurance. That's according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Oh, no! Only 150 seconds to go. The lugubrious blowhards at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists couldn't let all of the exciting anti-Trump activities of the president's first week go by without getting in on the act. As they like to do whenever they've been out of the news for too long, the…

British prime minister Theresa May sweeps into Washington, D.C. Friday as the first foreign leader to meet with President Donald Trump. Just one week after his inauguration, Trump will welcome May at the White House and the two will hold a joint press conference before engaging in a "working lunch."

As the first full week of the Trump administration comes to a close, the White House appears to be getting into something of a groove. On Monday, there was a bit of chaos within the West Wing, with staffers looking a little lost or unsure of where to go and what to do. One veteran White House…

A relative told me this story: She had gone to a neighbor’s party, only to have the neighbor announce her arrival by saying something like, "You don't have to worry, everyone. She didn't bring the conservative with her." And then, after telling me the story, my relative began to weep—not because of…

For most of last week, the report on enhanced interrogations produced by Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence dominated headlines. To the extent that there was a debate at all, it was one-sided. News coverage routinely described the findings as the “Senate torture report,” often…

The opponents of Donald Trump’s pick to be secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, are animated in large part by anger at her support for school voucher programs. And in their efforts to undermine vouchers, they've gone far afield—to Chile, to be exact, where an expansive school choice system was…

The work of THE WEEKLY STANDARD was briefly interrupted last week when a handful of Greenpeace stuntivists mounted a crane on a neighboring construction site, unfurled a banner, and then dangled in the air for several hours. Our office window had a perfect view of the pranksters as their banner…

Shortly after noon on January 20, America's newly installed president issued a declaration of war against global free trade. "We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great…

Kim Jong-un’s nicotine habit may yet be his undoing. That was the lesson from the defection, announced this week, of senior North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho.

The United States has had, prior to Donald Trump, 44 presidents. (Arguably we’ve had 43, but the guardians of historical pedantry long ago decreed that Grover Cleveland, who served nonconsecutive terms, would be counted as two.) There's no reason our descendants shouldn't enjoy at least another…

I'D NEVER REALLY CONSIDERED the way George W. Bush resembles Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island until I read Paul A. Cantor’s brilliant book, Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization. As Cantor points out, Gilligan is not the smartest one on the island. He doesn’t have the obvious…

William Wordsworth is a great English poet, but one poem he wrote irritates me. It’s the sonnet that begins: The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. I beg to differ. There's nothing wrong with getting and spending so long as you don't do it…

To set the scene of the man who was on the stage: It’s early April 1966, and for three days, Otis Redding is in residence at Los Angeles's Whisky A Go Go. He is far from his Chitlin' Circuit base back in the South, playing a club that would be at the epicenter of rock's psychedelic movement, where…

Should you find yourself strolling along Colorado’s Boulder Creek, be careful where you step. It seems that no small number of homeless have taken up residence there, and not only are they are in the habit of leaving trash hither and yon, so too waste of a more personal nature. "The…

At his cabin near Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau famously kept three chairs: “one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society." Even when he sat alone, Thoreau contained multitudes. We know him best as the man who lived for two years in a hut in the woods, recording his experiment in…

Back when the Apollo astronauts were feted as heroes for pushing out into other worlds, a hero of another breed landed in Washington to be recognized for his high service to this one. Sir Kenneth Clark (1903-1983), the eminent British art historian, was invited to the National Gallery to accept a…

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick was not going out of his mind when he told his team after its first playoff victory this year: “A big day for Rutgers!" Three of the Patriots' players—Devin McCourty, Logan Ryan, and Duron Harmon—had gone to college there, and all three had intercepted…

In his concluding chapter, Owen Hatherley cites a passage from Alexander Herzen’s From the Other Shore (1851), which argued that ideals and aspirations, as they float around in our minds, don't tend to take the same shape when they metamorphose into the material world. Herzen, a political theorist…

There is a great American novel almost nobody has read: Theodore Dreiser’s The Titan. It concerns a visionary man of business named Frank Cowperwood, and it's the story of how he helps turn Chicago into a major city by commandeering and then building its mass-transit system. Cowperwood is a…

More than a few commentators have analogized Donald Trump’s election to that of Andrew Jackson: anti-establishment, populist, and rooted in a grassroots anger against existing Washington ways and policies. And more than a few commentators have called Donald Trump's tweets and media blasts a…

Tom Price, President Trump’s choice for secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), has the distinction of being a better fit for the department he's been picked to lead than any other Trump cabinet nominee. But this hasn't helped Price gain Senate confirmation.

Narsarsuaq, Greenland

The liberal explain-it-all website Vox said the Women’s March on Washington on January 21 was possibly "the largest demonstration in U.S. history."

Every January, Davos Man, that semi-mythical hominid whose natural habitat is the club lounges of major airports, migrates to his eponymous Swiss Alps resort for the World Economic Forum. There, he huddles in a warm cave of mutual congratulation. Last week, the usual avalanche of glib optimism came…

Less than 24 hours before the official end of the Obama presidency, while White House staffers were pulling pictures off the walls and cleaning out their desks, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) posted without fanfare another installment of the documents captured in Osama…

Oh, no! Only 150 seconds to go. The lugubrious blowhards at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists couldn’t let all of the exciting anti-Trump activities of the president's first week go by without getting in on the act. As they like to do whenever they've been out of the news for too long, the…

Eight hundred people showed up for the meeting. So many that it was necessary to use the school gymnasium instead of the more intimate and comfortable auditorium, as planned.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with associate editor Ethan Epstein on the dangerous game of "gotcha."

As if America isn't going through enough already, here's a news flash: Our nation is to blame for propagating the story that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy from China. This "persistent" whopper was, in no uncertain terms, "conjured up by the Americans," writes Kantha Shelke. In 1929, an…

On January 13, 2017, a German regional court ruled that a lower court had been correct to find no anti-Semitism in the attempt by a group of Muslim men to burn down a synagogue in the city of Wuppertal.

According to the New York Times, the Trump administration is poised to reinstate the so-called "black site" prisons used by the CIA during the Bush presidency.

"Brexit means Brexit," Theresa May said in July 2016 when she replaced David Cameron as Britain's prime minister. Since then, May has continued to insist that Brexit will mean Brexit, but without offering even a taste of what Brexit means. Would it be a "hard Brexit," cutting Britain off entirely…

The Senate's number-two Democrat is facing a flood of phone calls urging him to drop his objection to a bipartisan measure condemning an anti-Israel United Nations resolution, according to a leading pro-Israel group that spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The State Department's senior management team has all resigned, reports the Washington Post's Josh Rogin:

Lost in the hysterical overreaction to the Trump Administration ordering government agencies to suspend Twitter and Facebook communications until the new administration's policies could be fully laid out is the disturbing fact that the U.S. government appears to have a social media footprint any…

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans had 12-to-15 billion dollars in mind for construction of a southern border wall, as they await a supplemental spending request from the White House to move forward on the project.

On this week's episode, the Substandard takes on M. Night Shyamalan and the art of the movie twist, Sonny reviews Split, Vic admits to watching Ghost (ditto!), and JVL wears his Prada jeans in studio. Plus inauguration memories and an ending you won't believe!

President Donald Trump went after Chelsea Manning via Twitter Thursday morning calling the convicted leaker "ungrateful" for penning an op/ed critical of President Barack Obama.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii, admitted to CNN that she met Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on her recent secret 4-day "fact-finding" trip to Damascus. "I did so because I felt that it's important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering," then…

Donald Trump, apparently sad! at having lost the popular vote in his race against Hillary Clinton, has announced on—where else?—Twitter, "a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal, and even those registered to vote who are dead."…

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I don't know about you, but I hate movie twists.

In Federalist 48, James Madison writes that, far from having three "coequal" branches of government—an erroneous claim that's commonly asserted today—the "legislative department derives a superiority in our governments" from having "more extensive" constitutional powers that are "less susceptible…

The border wall begins! Well, sort of. On Wednesday, President Trump signed two executive orders to deliver on one of his most famous and consistent campaign promises. Trump's first order directs the Department of Homeland Security to "immediately plan, design, and construct" the physical wall, and…

The Trump administration is reviewing the release of millions of dollars for Palestinian projects made by the Obama administration in a last-minute transfer that flouted congressional objections, according to statements provided to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

President Donald Trump derived power from a 2006 law to order work on a "secure, contiguous, and impassable" barrier along the United States's southern border Wednesday, advancing a campaign promise many critics have said is too ambitious to fulfill.

Over the course of the last year or so, many Trump supporters have pointed to the string of unlikely victories that propelled him to the White House and argued that he was playing three-dimensional chess. I think the temptation to consider Trump a tactical genius should be avoided. For every…

Stockholm

President Trump is making good on his campaign promises to curtail illegal immigration, signing two executive orders at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters Wednesday afternoon. Of the two directives, one pertains to the construction of a 2,000-mile wall along the Mexican border; the…

Seven Greenpeace activists climbed to the top of a crane north of the White House and hung a large banner reading "RESIST" on Wednesday morning. Given the timing, one would think the word might allude to President Trump's orders to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Greenpeace is…

During the 1952 campaign, Dwight Eisenhower boldly announced that if he won the presidency, "I shall go to Korea." He believed he could broker peace in the Korean conflict, which had reached a stalemate under Harry Truman. About two months before he took office, Ike flew to Korea on a visit that…

I'm just old enough to recall when the Dow hit 1,000. I was in the second grade and our Social Studies teacher devoted the election week to a discussion of politics and business. When the Dow hit 1,000 she asked my father to come in and explain the basics of the stock market to our class.

Seeing August Wilson’s play Fences on Broadway in 1987 was one of the highlights of my theatergoing life. This study of a 53-year-old garbageman named Troy Maxson—who struggles every moment to maintain his dignity and restrain the rage of a black man in 1950s Pittsburgh who was denied his chance to…

The first Twitter transition, it seems, while seamless at the top-level @POTUS account, isn't so among the many hundreds, if not thousands, of Twitter-verified executive branch accounts.

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Let's start with the big stuff: As the pioneering judge Michael Kirby demonstrated in his landmark Commission of Inquiry, the North Korean government commits "systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights," through its use of prison camps, torture, and enforced disappearances, among…

Here's the problem in a nutshell: President Trump thinks the media are out to destroy him. The media think they're holding him accountable. Neither Trump nor the media can tell the difference between these two things. In his most recent column, Ross Douthat rightly worries that this dynamic is…

Regulatory reform appears to be gaining traction in Washington, D.C. The White House directed agencies to halt the issuance of new regulations. Congress also got in the act. In its first week in session, the House of Representatives passed three bills to reduce the proliferation and costs of…

Twenty years ago, the academic journal Social Text published an article with the trendy title “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Herme­neutics of Quantum Gravity." The article claimed that quantum gravity is nothing but a social and linguistic construct that physicists are…

On its way out the door, the Obama Education Department quietly released the results of its $7 billion investment in the School Improvement Grants program, "the largest federal investment ever targeted to failing schools," according to the Washington Post. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had…

In the early days of the Trump presidency, the president and his administration seem to be traveling down two separate, parallel paths. On the one hand, President Trump has been pursuing concrete policy ends, primarily through executive orders: withdrawing from TPP, reinstating the Mexico City…

You can learn a lot from one largely overlooked confirmation hearing. And WWE mogul Linda McMahon's confirmation hearing Tuesday morning—she's been selected to run the Small Business Administration—was nothing if not largely overlooked. The SBA, founded in the 1950s, is a federal agency tasked with…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Michael Warren on the Trump administration's growing pains.

Congressional leaders are moving to respond to a last-minute transfer of millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority by the Obama administration with a range of measures, including a possible total freeze of funds to the PA, according to senators and other sources who spoke to THE WEEKLY…

Since his departure from the White House in 1933, it has often seemed that Herbert Hoover is the Rodney Dangerfield of American politics: He gets no respect. On the left, he has long been castigated as a presidential failure: a dour and rigid reactionary who did little to combat the Great…

An undercover video investigation from the pro-life activist group Live Action appears to show employees at multiple Planned Parenthood clinics turning away clients asking for prenatal care. Prenatal care is a benefit the organization touts as one of the many services they offer women beyond…

Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal said he would vote against Rep. Tom Price to be secretary of Health and Human Services because the Georgia lawmaker and physician is "trying to destroy a woman's right to health care."

So what now for the 42nd president of the United States? Will Bill Clinton become, in the political world, the equivalent of those TV actors who had a top-rated series once upon a time and are now reduced to doing cameos on quiz shows? He has been around for so long that it is difficult to imagine…

I am a diehard Chicago Bears fan, but when they are not in contention (a common occurrence these days) I need someone else to root for. When I’ve made a wager on the game the task is easy, but failing that I tend to pick the team that has a uniform that most closely resembles what they wore when I…

Those of us left feeling uninspired by both the inauguration of President Trump and the politics of the Women's March will find a sympathetic perspective in writer Sarah B. Anderson's essay "Inauguration Day, the Women's March and the Lonely in Between." Anderson invites all those in the middle…

Accusations that French bureaucrats are insufficiently innovative are simply untrue. With Brexit forcing American bankers to reconsider maintaining their presence in London, the French finance minister hastened to New York to persuade Wall Street leaders that Paris is the city best positioned to…

The New York Times is reporting that President Donald Trump will keep James Comey on as FBI Director for the foreseeable future.

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It is an amazing fact that the individual mandate to buy health insurance largely originated with policy wonks and politicians on the conservative side of the aisle. This ill-conceived and unconstitutional (despite the opinions of five justices) idea eventually became perhaps the most despised part…

What I saw of the inauguration: Not much.

The response from Trump supporters, both in the media and in the wild, to Sean Spicer's Saturday press conference were instructive. It basically boiled down to:

It's easy to understand why Barack Obama's supporters are so sad to see him leave the White House. Although he wasn't quite the liberal Reagan he had hoped to become, he was nonetheless an inspiring (for them, anyway) and often successful champion of progressivism—who's been replaced by Donald…

The weather Monday in Washington was windy, rainy, and messy—but those were hardly the conditions inside the West Wing on what the Trump administration was calling its first "working day." President Trump had an early meeting with CEOs of some of the country's largest manufacturers, a phone call…

Democrats have taken stock of Dr. Tom Price's financial dealings before the Senate votes on his nomination to be secretary of Health and Human Services. The two most recent lines of attack, reported in separate media stories last week, concern health care investments Price said were made at the…

Editor-at-large Bill Kristol discussed Sean Spicer's first press briefing and President Trump's unpresidential first days with Jake Tapper on Monday. Spicer was "disastrous" Saturday and "better" at Monday's first official briefing, Kristol said. The president's conduct, on the other hand, shows no…

White House press secretary Sean Spicer turned heads on Saturday evening when he called reporters to the briefing room and read from a written statement: "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration—period—both in person and around the globe." Spicer drew intense criticism because…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on the state of the fourth estate in the first days of the Trump presidency.

Monday morning, Stephen Hayes broke news of Republican accusations that Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer went back on a promise to allow an Inauguration Day vote on the confirmation of Rep. Mike Pompeo to head the CIA. Witnesses told of an angry exchange between Senator Tom Cotton and Schumer…

Republican leadership is rethinking its relationship with Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer after Schumer betrayed a promise to allow a vote last Friday on President Donald Trump's pick for CIA director, according to a top Republican lawmaker who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The Washington Post's "fact check" of Donald Trump's inaugural address is a pretty perfect distillation of one of the most egregious aspects of "fact checking." It kind of pains me to say this, because while I have serious problems with other fact-checking organizations that are institutionally…

On March 25, 1300, a 35-year-old Florentine poet and politician set out on a long journey afoot in search of redemption. His destination was the eternal city. The poet in question, of course, was Dante Alighieri, and the city was not heaven, but Rome.

The secretary of state is usually thought of as the principal cabinet position, and indeed he or she is first among cabinet officers and fourth in line overall to succeed the president. But when Rex Tillerson shows up at Foggy Bottom, he will discover a department that faces many challenges, not…

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which bars federal funds from going to overseas organizations that perform or promote abortions.

Florida senator Marco Rubio announced his support for President Donald Trump's pick for secretary of state ahead of a committee vote for the nominee Monday, setting aside reservations over the former oil executive's ties to the Kremlin and evasive answers on human rights violations.

The Gideon Bible it isn't. At a chain of mid-tier hotels in Japan—roughly equivalent to the Holiday Inn—guests are treated to another form of bedtime reading. Each room includes a book, penned by the chain's founder and CEO, that claims, among other things, that the Nanjing Massacre was "fabricated…

This morning, Jonathan V. Last's article "Trumpism Corrupts: Spicer Edition" was discussed on Morning Joe:

Our neighborhood dodged a bullet. At least that's the spin the local weekly paper covering our tony D.C. community put on the news that a former museum would become a single-family residence rather than be converted into apartments. This despite the fact that the building boasts 27,000 square feet,…

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Secretary of Defense James Mattis began his first day on the job at the Pentagon by delivering a message to all Department of Defense employees, the U.S. military, and to ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

Old habits die hard. And using the Department of Education to dispense federal mandates in service to an overarching agenda has been habitual practice these past eight years.

Ronald Reagan loved Wash­ington but disliked the government. George W. Bush hated Washington but liked the government. Donald Trump loathes both Washington and the government.

When President Donald Trump visited the CIA Saturday, he had hoped that CIA Director Mike Pompeo would accompany him. But when Trump arrived at the Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the Agency, he was instead accompanied by Congressman Mike Pompeo.

For a lot of obvious reasons, the U.S. is filled with space enthusiasts. Most space enthusiasts, you'll find, have a favorite mission. For many, it's Mercury-Atlas 6, John Glenn's orbital flight. For many it's Gemini 4, when Ed Young made the first American Spacewalk, or Gemini 6, the first ever…

Donald Trump has been president for nearly four days, but transition officials had suggested last week that Monday should be considered the "first" working day of the famed first 100 days. That may be the view in the West Wing, but quite a bit happened over the weekend that made it clear the Trump…

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Alice Lloyd reports on the bitter battle over Betsy DeVos' nomination to be secretary of education. Then, Christopher DeMuth joins host Eric Felten to talk about whether and how Donald Trump will push for deregulation.

The First Three Days

The first official White House press conference is on Monday, but Sean Spicer called a Very Special Presser Saturday evening. Why? He had something he wanted to get off his chest. "[P]hotographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize…

"Don't try to divide us," said Gloria Steinem, the reigning queen of second-wave feminism, now 81, who first rose to fame for going undercover as a Playboy bunny. She'd come to help rally a crowd reportedly surpassing 500,000 women, male allies, and acquiescent children—all of whom find a common…

Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, on why he didn't like president Trump's inaugural address, and why he's not too happy about writers on the right defending it.

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The symbolism of President Donald Trump's pre-inaugural appearance before the Lincoln Memorial was part of his effort to show that he is sympathetic to the aspirations of the black community even though one of its leaders declared him "illegitimate" and added a boycott of Friday's swearing-in to…

It was an odd time for the inauguration goers to sing the boos. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, a liberal Democrat, had just delivered a few lines that could have easily prompted applause had they been uttered by President Donald Trump, the populist Republican most people in attendance were…

Two key members of President Donald Trump's national security apparatus sailed through Senate confirmation votes Friday afternoon, as retired Marine Gens. James Mattis and John Kelly earned overwhelming support in the upper chamber to become the first cabinet picks of the new administration to win…

Perhaps there are a few relevant historical touchstones, but President Donald J. Trump—typing those words still feels surreal—delivered an inaugural address unlike any any other. Inaugural speeches are typically vehicles for unity and uplift. Even Abraham Lincoln, on the verge of civil war,…

Republican senators hedged their responses to President Donald Trump's inaugural address Friday, pairing praise of the speech with an acknowledgment that Trump could not touch on every topic in just 17 minutes.

President Donald J. Trump gave an aggressive, combative inaugural speech today, heavy on the populism and economic nationalism that energized his campaign, and virtually devoid of the themes and principles that have defined the Republican party and the conservative movement at its heart.

That Donald Trump's inaugural speech was patriotic, nationalistic and populist – that was no surprise. What was unexpected, at least by me, was his call for government action. And not just what government can do to unleash the economy and incentivize Americans to work, save, and invest

Donald Trump has said repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act should be done "very quickly"—but the issue was nowhere to be found in the president's inaugural address at the U.S. Capitol Friday. Trump's speech, which struck populist themes on trade, immigration, foreign policy, and…

Months after Labor Day, three of the inauguration's top billing women came out in white suits. Hillary Clinton and the Trump sisters Tiffany and Ivanka were all wearing the color of sisterhood, according to CNN's Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash who noted the significane of Clinton's styling.

President and First Lady Obama greeted President-elect and First Lady-to-be Trump on the steps of the White House Friday morning. The profound moment was captured for history as the four posed for photographers.

After enduring eight years of a community organizer as president, perhaps the chaotic scene outside the National Press Club in Washington DC on the eve of Inauguration Day represented a fitting coda to the Obama era.

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Senator Ben Sasse was no fan of Donald Trump during the primary and general elections of 2016. The idea that Trump is the person being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States probably fills the Nebraskan with more trepidation and anxiety than joy and hope.

Picture The Clintons as a top TV series that made its debut in January 1992, as Bill and Hillary appeared on 60 Minutes on Super Bowl Sunday to refute charges that Bill had had a fling with a chanteuse called Gennifer Flowers. It peaked in 1998 with the gigantic impeachment debacle (a loser for…

Today is Inauguration Day, so it seems fitting to kick things off with the inaugural edition of this new feature here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. For the first 100 (or so) days of the Donald J. Trump administration, look to this space for inside coverage of our 45th president, his White House, and his…

The secretary of state is usually thought of as the principal cabinet position, and indeed he or she is first among cabinet officers and fourth in line overall to succeed the president. But when Rex Tillerson shows up at Foggy Bottom, he will discover a department that faces many challenges, not…

Eight years ago, reflecting on the inauguration of President Barack Obama, I wrote a piece that made two arguments, which may be worth briefly revisiting.

On January 13, 2017, a German regional court ruled that a lower court had been correct to find no anti-Semitism in the attempt by a group of Muslim men to burn down a synagogue in the city of Wuppertal.

Since his departure from the White House in 1933, it has often seemed that Herbert Hoover is the Rodney Dangerfield of American politics: He gets no respect. On the left, he has long been castigated as a presidential failure: a dour and rigid reactionary who did little to combat the Great…

During the 1952 campaign, Dwight Eisenhower boldly announced that if he won the presidency, “I shall go to Korea." He believed he could broker peace in the Korean conflict, which had reached a stalemate under Harry Truman. About two months before he took office, Ike flew to Korea on a visit that…

Don’t miss the new episode of "Conversations with Bill Kristol," the video series in which The Weekly Standard's editor at large talks philosophy, politics, and culture with big thinkers. A case in point is the most recent program, which features that most worthy of worthies, Scrapbook colleague…

President Trump may not be a full-spectrum deregulator in the Ronald Reagan tradition. He hasn’t had much to say about the Food and Drug Administration or Federal Communications Commission—two favorite targets of regulatory reformers—and he sometimes sounds like an antitrust activist. But he has…

Twenty years ago, the academic journal Social Text published an article with the trendy title “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Herme­neutics of Quantum Gravity." The article claimed that quantum gravity is nothing but a social and linguistic construct that physicists are…

Stockholm

Seeing August Wilson’s play Fences on Broadway in 1987 was one of the highlights of my theatergoing life. This study of a 53-year-old garbageman named Troy Maxson—who struggles every moment to maintain his dignity and restrain the rage of a black man in 1950s Pittsburgh who was denied his chance to…

IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF AMERICAN CONSERVATISM, young Reaganites imagined there would one day be a sort of apostolic succession from Ronald Reagan to Jack Kemp. When Kemp’s star faded and Bret Schundler was elected mayor of Jersey City—a bright spot for conservatives in 1993, that bleak first year…

Admit to being puzzled as to how to place this novel. Not how to evaluate its merits, for there are many. Lisa O’Donnell’s first novel, The Death of Bees, was the recipient of the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize; awarded by the Common-wealth Foundation for first novels, the prize “seeks to unearth,…

On March 25, 1300, a 35-year-old Florentine poet and politician set out on a long journey afoot in search of redemption. His destination was the eternal city. The poet in question, of course, was Dante Alighieri, and the city was not heaven, but Rome.

Last week, I finally defended my dissertation at the University of Chicago.

In The Pleasures of the Imagination (1997), his study of English culture in the 18th century, John Brewer made a vital point when he argued that, although we might look back on the culture of the Georgians and see an enviable “order, stability and decorum," the Georgians themselves considered it…

If you hadn’t noticed, the election of Donald Trump has led to some, well, tension in social settings. Weeks after the vote, families gathered for Thanksgiving and the college kids were just too, too appalled by their parents' deplorable Trumpism to even talk about it. Come Christmas the snowflakes…

As journalistic bombshells go, CNN’s January 10 report on President Trump was explosive: "Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump,…

Even with a packed schedule of farewell speeches and his final presidential press conference, Barack Obama managed to find time for exit interviews in his last few White House weeks: There was the 60 Minutes sit-down, the Lester Holt love-fest, an NPR snoozer, David Axelrod’s "Axe Files" podcast,…

"Brexit means Brexit,” Theresa May said in July 2016 when she replaced David Cameron as Britain's prime minister. Since then, May has continued to insist that Brexit will mean Brexit, but without offering even a taste of what Brexit means. Would it be a "hard Brexit," cutting Britain off entirely…

Picture The Clintons as a top TV series that made its debut in January 1992, as Bill and Hillary appeared on 60 Minutes on Super Bowl Sunday to refute charges that Bill had had a fling with a chanteuse called Gennifer Flowers. It peaked in 1998 with the gigantic impeachment debacle (a loser for…

Ronald Reagan loved Wash­ington but disliked the government. George W. Bush hated Washington but liked the government. Donald Trump loathes both Washington and the government.

The study and contemplation of nature is surely one of the sovereign balms of human existence, and two superb new books offer essential pleasures and benefits in spades.

Kids at Barack Obama Elementary have known only one president. Many fear the next.

As if America isn’t going through enough already, here's a news flash: Our nation is to blame for propagating the story that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy from China. This "persistent" whopper was, in no uncertain terms, "conjured up by the Americans," writes Kantha Shelke. In 1929, an…

So what now for the 42nd president of the United States? Will Bill Clinton become, in the political world, the equivalent of those TV actors who had a top-rated series once upon a time and are now reduced to doing cameos on quiz shows? He has been around for so long that it is difficult to imagine…

Whether Barack Obama returns to the craft of short stories or makes with the memoirs, chances are he will be doing much of his writing not in Chicago, but in Washington, where he and his family have chosen to reside.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior editor Lee Smith, on Obama's abysmal foreign policy record on Israel, Russia, and Iran.

Gee, I'm having a tough time deciding which exciting anti-Trump demonstration to attend this weekend. Fortunately the Huffington Post published a helpful list:

When Donald Trump was elected, I promised friends I would do everything in my power to retaliate against his craven Red State supporters. That winter getaway to Florida was off. So was the spring jaunt to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. And my cheese-head friend up in Milwaukee would…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released 98 additional items from Osama bin Laden's compound today. If the ODNI has its way, then these files will be the last the American people see for some time. The accompanying announcement is titled, "Closing the Book on bin Laden:…

There are some myths that just won't die, and one of those myths was perpetuated in a Washington Post article on Wednesday. In a story on GOP efforts to redirect taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood to community health centers, the Post reports:

According to The Hill, Trump officials are preparing an ambitious plan to cut spending and shrink the size of the federal government. In a nutshell, this is the plan:

On the last full day of the Obama White House—a phrase conservatives have waited eight long years to utter—it's worth recalling the Obama administration's own arguments about the connection between Obamacare's "community rating" mandate and runaway health costs.

My open heart surgery was originally scheduled for 7:30 a.m., November 9—the morning after the election—but a couple of weeks before, I managed to switch it to a day later. Why take the chance that someone vital in the operating room had been up all night watching the returns—or, as it turned out,…

At a dinner Wednesday night in Washington, Donald Trump compared his victory—and his forthcoming presidency—to that of Andrew Jackson almost two centuries ago. "'There hasn't been anything like this since Andrew Jackson,' Mr. Trump quoted his admirers saying."

A New York Times report on the eve of Rick Perry's confirmation hearing for Secretary of Energy Wednesday alleged that the former Texas governor had only recently discovered that the job largely involves nuclear issues. But Perry acknowledged in 2014 that the Department of Energy is responsible for…

Jonathan Last presciently writes this morning of the tennis calendar's first major tournament, the Australian Open:

President-elect Donald Trump’s attempt to put the conflicts issue behind him has failed, at least according to the mainstream media. His announcement that he would resign from all positions with companies in the Trump Organization, put the Trump Organization in a trust run by his two sons and a…

Reviews and News:

Nearly every year, I attend a Christmas service, even though I'm Jewish. Every year, the officiant delivering the homily points out that Christmas occurs in winter, bringing us hope in dark hours. As he says, "Perhaps it is the winter of your life."

In this Very Special Episode, Vic and Jonathan lament the death of shopping malls (Sonny: "Meh"), the Substandard honors Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka and the legends of professional wrestling, and why do Vic and Sonny keep making fun of JVL's Prada jeans? Plus, arcade etiquette and Shannen Doherty—all on…

My youth in the very Protestant North Carolina of the 1940s was suffused with Bible translation. One version stood supreme and virtually alone: the King James, or Authorized, version of 1611, whose words and rhythms remain the stuff of memory. Schooldays, their rituals as yet uncensured by the…

Donald Trump is in the rare position of loathing the media and dominating them—simultaneously. What more could a president-elect want as he enters the White House? Not much.

During the confirmation hearings of Rep. Tom Price for the cabinet position of Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized the American society as "not particularly compassionate" compared to other countries on earth.

John Brennan says he didn't leak the dossier that connected Donald Trump to Russia. As the outgoing CIA director told the Wall Street Journal, "First of all, this is not intelligence community information." Brennan noted, the Journal reported, "that the dossier had been circulating "many months"…

Trying to allay concerns about possible cuts to Medicaid expansion, Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Rep. Tom Price said on Wednesday that the Trump administration "absolutely must ensure that individuals don't fall through the cracks in whatever transition occurs."

We're into Day 4 of the Australian Open!

Frequent WEEKLY STANDARD contributor Ike Brannon has a new Cato Institute research paper out that looks at the costs of repealing Deferred Access for Childhood Arrivals:

A file consisting of over 500 pages of heavily reacted documents was posted to the FBI's Freedom of Information Act website Wednesday. The subject of many of the documents is a mystery due to the redaction, but the investigation into Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich and a 2006 incident involving…

At her confirmation hearing Tuesday, Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos fought back against allegations that her school reform efforts in Detroit were a failure.

January 20 will be a banner day for the Republican party. On the steps of the Capitol, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the nation’s 45th president. In the building behind the ceremony, his party will be ready to enact his program with a sturdy congressional majority. The GOP is in historically…

Rep. Tom Price, the nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services in the new presidential administration, said during his confirmation hearing Wednesday that he was committed to President-elect Donald Trump's vision of providing "insurance for everybody."

Russia committed war crimes in Syria and violated the international order with its annexation of Crimea, the president-elect's pick for United Nations ambassador affirmed Wednesday.

The Trump administration will not stand for anti-Israel bias at the United Nations, the president-elect's pick for ambassador to the international body vowed Wednesday.

Among the more than 200 commutations handed out yesterday, President Obama commuted the sentence of Oscar López Rivera, a member of Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group advocating Puerto Rican independence. He is set to be released May 17.

President-elect Donald Trump is "troubled" by President Barack Obama's commutation of the sentence of former Army private Chelsea Manning, according to a spokesman.

At a heated three-and-half-hour confirmation hearing Tuesday evening, Senate Democrats predictably pressed the president-elect's Education Secretary-designate. Betsy DeVos, a major Republican donor and school choice advocate, has proven one of his more controversial appointees: Her decades of…

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There was a time, early in Barack Obama’s presidency, when it was considered outrageous to worry out loud that the new president might treat enemies better than allies, run down friends and elevate foes, show solidarity with anti-American leaders, maybe even release dangerous terrorists or…

The attorney of Chelsea Manning says President Obama's commutation of the former Army private's sentence has "saved her life."

What makes a meaningful life? It's an often strenuous, and in no way uniformly happy, existence compelled by service to some higher calling—higher, anyway, than selfish gratification. It's also an explainable life, simple enough to be told back to you as a story, but it keeps in touch with the…

Eric Rohmer was 50 when his mother died in 1970. They were in regular contact, and he often took his two sons from Paris to see her at her home in Tulle. But she went to her grave convinced that her eldest child was a classics teacher at a provincial lycée. She had no idea that he had been editor…

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

Over at Fox News, the headline blares: "Clinton Global Initiative to lay off employees, shut down amid dwindling donations." Let's pause for a moment and contemplate why donations to the overarching Clinton Foundation would be dwindling. It's almost as if it were really a vehicle for influence…

The White House conceded Tuesday that it wouldn't close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by the time President Obama leaves office later this week, but it hasn't stopped releasing detainees in the run-up to Inauguration Day.

When the secret military documents stolen by former Army private Chelsea Manning were released by WikiLeaks, the official position of the Pentagon was that Manning's illegal actions had endangered the lives of American soldiers.

Top Republican lawmakers are ripping President Obama's last-minute decision to commute the bulk of former Army Private Chelsea Manning's 35-year prison sentence.

On CNN, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton expressed disappointment with President Obama's commutation of Private Chelsea Manning, saying his cooperation with WikiLeaks "caused serious national security harm."

President Obama has commuted most of the 35-year prison term of U.S. intelligence leaker Chelsea Manning, whose disclosures were coveted by then-al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The Obama administration's United Nations ambassador used the final major speech of her tenure Tuesday to castigate the Kremlin for eight years' worth of destabilizing activities, warning against another reset with the country amid vows from President-elect Donald Trump to mend relations with…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior editor Andrew Ferguson on the Hollywood snubbing of Trump's inauguration and the future of democracy.

It's an elastic stretch to compare Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to Donald Trump, as pundits and critics of the Hugo Chavez successor have done for the last year and a half. Maduro's opinion of immigration from Colombia into his country—"Who comes over from Colombia? It's people practically…

Tweet

It all seems a bit like an ugly fairy tale now—an allegory, set in the heady and hectic late 1960s and early '70s, of good versus evil, order versus chaos, revolution by dynamite sticks and law enforcement by black-bag jobs. This was, in retrospect, a match made in heaven: The Weather Underground…

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush was quick to praise the president-elect's choice of Betsy DeVos for Education secretary when the transition team announced her nomination in November. And on Tuesday, the day of her confirmation hearing, he expounded his support for DeVos in USA Today, praising her…

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Scottish teenager Kate Hume was no stranger to tragedy. By the time the great European powers hurtled into war at the end of July 1914, her older brother had already been dead more than two years: Violinist John "Jock" Hume was a member of Wallace Hartley's eight-man orchestra that had played on…

Plans to fund a wall between the United States and Mexico are starting to take clearer shape as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office. Politico reported this month that congressional Republicans and the new administration are contemplating a bid to appropriate money through an…

You can find out everything you need to know about the Trump-fixated L.L. Bean boycott by … perusing the L.L. Bean catalogue. Let's pick up the one titled Winter 2017, opening pages at random. Here, in the men's section, is "Our Genuinely Tough River Driver Shirt … the perfect cold-weather tee in…

Democratic senator Patty Murray, once called the "mom in tennis shoes" before she entered politics, is faced with a "profiles in courage" moment this week. She is the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which holds a hearing Tuesday on the nomination of Betsy…

Nat Hentoff—columnist, music critic, jazz lover, civil libertarian, atheist, pro-life intellectual opposed to abortion and the death penalty—was prolific and productive up until the end of his life. He died last week of natural causes at the age of 91. He was so expansive in his interests and…

During Monday's edition of Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC, THE WEEKLY STANDARD editor at large Bill Kristol sided with CIA Director John Brennan's assessment that President-elect Donald Trump "[did not have] a full appreciation of Russian capabilities … intentions and actions." Trump tweeted his…

On the day set aside to celebrate the life and cause of the celebrated civil rights leader, here are a few selected speeches from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Republican senator Marco Rubio told reporters Monday he is still mulling whether to support secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, a decision that could bode ill for the former Exxon Mobil CEO's confirmation hopes.

Congress has limited options for responding to a United Nations Security Council resolution critical of Israel, according to a top Palestinian official who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Monica Crowley is withdrawing from her position on the Trump administration National Security Council, according to a statement posted Monday, after it was discovered that Crowley plagiarized sections of her book and doctoral dissertation.

Planned Parenthood honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today with a tweet saying "On Martin Luther King, Jr. day, we celebrate the man who dedicated his life to ending oppression."

In the latest episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol, THE WEEKLY STANDARD senior editor Andrew Ferguson joins editor at large Bill Kristol to discuss his career in writing, journalism and conservatism, the revenge of the baby boomers, and academia.

Sigmund Freud, still hailed as "the most famous and most controversial thinker of the 20th century," published 20 books and more than 300 articles during his long lifetime. He also left extensive drafts, notes, diaries, and annotations in his vast library, ransomed from the Nazis by Princess Marie…

President-elect Donald Trump says his proposal to replace Obamacare will guarantee "insurance for everybody" and "great health care" that is "much less expensive and much better." Here's more from the Washington Post's interview with Trump:

Donald Trump claimed Sunday that CIA Director John Brennan could have leaked sensitive and unsubstantiated information about the president-elect. In a series of tweets, Trump criticized Brennan and then openly questioned to his nearly 19 million followers on the social media platform, "Was this the…

Reviews and News:

The Puerto Rico Fiscal Oversight Board is on a tight deadline to draft a recovery plan that will put the island back on its financial feet, avoid further defaults, and pave the way for a sustainable economic future. The Board is currently slated to unveil its Fiscal and Economic Growth Plan (FEGP)…

On January 6, a 27-year-old woman, Emilie Inman, was stabbed to death inside her home in Berkeley, California, and another Berkeley woman was stabbed on the street, allegedly by the same assailant, a UC-Berkeley student named Pablo Gomez Jr., who was arrested the next day and remains in custody.

If you leave out writers and composers, there are only two serious contenders for title of greatest artist in history: Michelangelo and Leonardo. They tie for the title of greatest painter; Michelangelo is in sole possession for the title of greatest sculptor. In fact only one Leonardo sculpture…

Joining ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, editor at large Bill Kristol expressed cautious optimism with Donald Trump's cabinet picks, and reiterated concern with Trump following his Twitter battle with Georgia Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis.

Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley spoke to the Utah Democratic party at a gala event Saturday night and, according to his own Twitter feed, delivered a message of resistance, defiance and divisiveness.

Inauguration week

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes talks about Trump's strategy of permanent offense. Then, Ethan Epstein joins host Eric Felten to talk about the president-elect's dangerous flirtation with anti-vaccine crank Robert Kennedy Jr. Then we survey the geopolitical landscape with…

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The president-elect's boorishness allegedly fired up a new generation of bullies to pick on their peers' essential insecurities—a phenomenon doomily dubbed the "Trump Effect."

A week from Monday, when the post-inauguration revelries, which include a "Deplorables Ball", are no more, Donald J. Trump, the forty-fifth President of the United States of America, will for the first time become fully aware of the 115th Congress of the United States of America. Although he has…

Michael Flynn, the designated national security advisor for incoming president Donald Trump, communicated by phone frequently late last month with Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. And according to the Washington Post, in one of those phone conversations, Kislyak invited the…

Georgia Democratic representative John Lewis said that President-elect Donald Trump is not a "legitimate president" during an interview with Meet the Press set to air on Sunday.

The House approved a budget Friday providing for Congress to axe the revenue-related portions of Obamacare, teeing up a repeal procedure that congressional Democrats are powerless to stop.

The House voted 268-151 Friday afternoon to waive retired Marine Gen. James Mattis from a restriction that would prevent him as serving as secretary of defense, sending the bill to the president's desk.

Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, where Trump's winning week in the Senate as his cabinet nominees appear to be on track to approval; Democrats have painted up targets for next round (DeVos and Price); Trump's nominees show independent streak; and did Paul Anka really…

A federal judge in West Virginia has given the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) less than seven months to review whether its Obama-era policies directly led to job losses in the coal industry, according to an order issued Wednesday.

On Thursday, President Obama announced an end to the "wet foot, dry foot" policy that allowed most Cuban migrants who reach the United States to become legal permanent residents after one year.

There are all manner of principled reasons that someone—especially a Democratic senator—might oppose Alabama senator Jeff Sessions becoming the next attorney general. (Indeed, a number of prominent conservative voices have even wondered aloud about Sessions's enthusiasm for civil asset forfeiture.)

A good way to look at the Obama era is as a giant experiment in misdirection—the Age of Missing the Point. When a huge majority of Americans told pollsters that they were happy with their health care, the administration decided to remake the entire system of delivering health care. When vast,…

Even as the media, and all of Washington, buzzed with scandalous uncorroborated claims about President-elect Donald Trump's ties to the Kremlin, a lesser-noticed moment neatly illustrated another side of Trump's—or Trump-era conservatism's—Russia problem. After Marco Rubio grilled Rex Tillerson at…

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As John Kerry wraps up his tenure as secretary of state, he seems determined to defend his and President Obama's legacy regarding the conflict in Syria. At this week's U.S. Institute of Peace's conference, Judy Woodruff asked Kerry about the perception that U.S. leadership could not be relied on…

At a town hall forum conducted by CNN and hosted by Jake Tapper, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan fielded a myriad of questions ranging from repealing and replacing Obamacare to his differences with the incoming Trump administration to whether he knows how to "dab" or not. (Spoiler alert: He does and…

Cory Booker's toothless testimony last week at the confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions failed to derail the nomination of the next attorney general. But The Scrapbook suspects that was never the New Jersey Democrat's intent when he announced he would defy an unwritten rule of Senate decorum and…

Hmm, maybe liberals can actually rip out the kitchen sink and throw it at Jeff Sessions.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

In the middle of a 3,500-word Newsweek profile of Betsy DeVos—the philanthropist and education reform crusader Donald Trump has nominated for education secretary—The Scrapbook spotted this trenchant observation:

The Scrapbook finds itself so very, very disappointed in the media for their coverage of the recent salacious assertions about the president-elect.

Retired Marine Corps general Jim Mattis's confirmation hearing was such a breeze that even the Code Pink protesters in the room didn't say a peep. The anti-war activists who had disrupted Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions' hearing on Tuesday by ranting about racism and the KKK only protested…

Plans to fund a wall between the United States and Mexico are starting to take clearer shape as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office. Politico reported this month that congressional Republicans and the new administration are contemplating a bid to appropriate money through an…

The Scrapbook finds itself so very, very disappointed in the media for their coverage of the recent salacious assertions about the president-elect.

Nearly every year, I attend a Christmas service, even though I’m Jewish. Every year, the officiant delivering the homily points out that Christmas occurs in winter, bringing us hope in dark hours. As he says, "Perhaps it is the winter of your life."

Readers may recall the evening, in 1973, when Marlon Brando declined to accept, in person, his Oscar for The Godfather and sent instead a winsome half-Native-American woman (stage name: Sacheen Littlefeather), who proceeded to deliver a Brando-certified speech about the film industry’s…

My open heart surgery was originally scheduled for 7:30 a.m., November 9—the morning after the election—but a couple of weeks before, I managed to switch it to a day later. Why take the chance that someone vital in the operating room had been up all night watching the returns—or, as it turned out,…

Even as the media, and all of Washington, buzzed with scandalous uncorroborated claims about President-elect Donald Trump’s ties to the Kremlin, a lesser-noticed moment neatly illustrated another side of Trump's—or Trump-era conservatism's—Russia problem. After Marco Rubio grilled Rex Tillerson at…

My youth in the very Protestant North Carolina of the 1940s was suffused with Bible translation. One version stood supreme and virtually alone: the King James, or Authorized, version of 1611, whose words and rhythms remain the stuff of memory. Schooldays, their rituals as yet uncensured by the…

It all seems a bit like an ugly fairy tale now—an allegory, set in the heady and hectic late 1960s and early '70s, of good versus evil, order versus chaos, revolution by dynamite sticks and law enforcement by black-bag jobs. This was, in retrospect, a match made in heaven: The Weather Underground…

And they worried he wouldn’t be bipartisan! Last week, President-elect Donald Trump met with that scion of America's premier Democratic dynasty, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The confab, which reportedly occurred at Trump's request, centered on the issue of childhood vaccines and their (nonexistent)…

Nat Hentoff—columnist, music critic, jazz lover, civil libertarian, atheist, pro-life intellectual opposed to abortion and the death penalty—was prolific and productive up until the end of his life. He died last week of natural causes at the age of 91. He was so expansive in his interests and…

Years ago, when I was writing about a wave of immigrant violence in France, a higher-up in the housing authority of a provincial city took me on a tour of some slum projects. Alphonse was his name. He was the directeur de régie de gestion, which, as best I could translate, meant "director of the…

As Barack Obama leaves the Oval Office, so too will the “post-Cold War era" exit the scene. Another Lost Ark, it may wind up in an endless, dusty warehouse, a torrent locked in a raw wood crate.

Eric Rohmer was 50 when his mother died in 1970. They were in regular contact, and he often took his two sons from Paris to see her at her home in Tulle. But she went to her grave convinced that her eldest child was a classics teacher at a provincial lycée. She had no idea that he had been editor…

Spend a few days in China, and you are bound to witness a stranger exposing his bare bottom on the subway or defecating on the sidewalk. While dismayed, you will find it easy to forgive these lewd acts: The perpetrators are generally under the age of 4. Following Chinese custom, their parents have…

Donald Trump is in the rare position of loathing the media and dominating them—simultaneously. What more could a president-elect want as he enters the White House? Not much.

Sigmund Freud, still hailed as “the most famous and most controversial thinker of the 20th century," published 20 books and more than 300 articles during his long lifetime. He also left extensive drafts, notes, diaries, and annotations in his vast library, ransomed from the Nazis by Princess Marie…

Just weeks after 9/11, Charles Krauthammer declared in these pages that our holiday from history—the 1990s—had come "to an abrupt end." And the United States did get back to work—briefly. But it turns out that President George W. Bush's exhortation in the aftermath of 9/11 that we should keep on…

LAST WEDNESDAY, in testimony before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld fired the latest salvo in his campaign to recast American defense strategy and to rescue the fading hopes for this year’s Pentagon budget. But Rumsfeld’s campaign is less blitzkrieg…

The Ancient Greeks won the Cold War.

When Donald Trump was elected, I promised friends I would do everything in my power to retaliate against his craven Red State supporters. That winter getaway to Florida was off. So was the spring jaunt to the Rock ’n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. And my cheese-head friend up in Milwaukee would…

President-elect Donald Trump’s attempt to put the conflicts issue behind him has failed, at least according to the mainstream media. His announcement that he would resign from all positions with companies in the Trump Organization, put the Trump Organization in a trust run by his two sons and a…

Scottish teenager Kate Hume was no stranger to tragedy. By the time the great European powers hurtled into war at the end of July 1914, her older brother had already been dead more than two years: Violinist John “Jock" Hume was a member of Wallace Hartley's eight-man orchestra that had played on…

In the middle of a 3,500-word Newsweek profile of Betsy DeVos—the philanthropist and education reform crusader Donald Trump has nominated for education secretary—The Scrapbook spotted this trenchant observation:

January 20 will be a banner day for the Republican party. On the steps of the Capitol, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the nation’s 45th president. In the building behind the ceremony, his party will be ready to enact his program with a sturdy congressional majority. The GOP is in historically…

Cory Booker’s toothless testimony last week at the confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions failed to derail the nomination of the next attorney general. But The Scrapbook suspects that was never the New Jersey Democrat's intent when he announced he would defy an unwritten rule of Senate decorum and…

While members of the press gradually filled their designated seats at the back of the hearing room where Dr. Ben Carson would undergo uncommonly friendly questioning about his plans to lead the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, members of the Carson family linked up in the…

It was an appropriate, if inauspicious, beginning to Thursday's confirmation hearing for Mike Pompeo that the lights suddenly went out during opening statements. The Kansas congressman is Donald Trump's selection to head the Central Intelligence Agency, which operates in the shadows. But even this…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the media and their coverage of presidents, past and present.

Erbil, Iraq

The Senate easily cleared a waiver Thursday afternoon allowing retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to serve as secretary of defense, teeing up similar action from the House as Democrats in the lower chamber threatened to protest the measure.

During an erudite discussion of the NFL playoffs, Golden Globes, and actors becoming directors, a bottle mishap nearly derails the episode. Plus JVL dismantles the Skins Bandwagon. Sonny breaks down the Fourth Wall. And Vic mentions The Big Hunt for no apparent reason. All on this week's…

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, CIA director nominee and Kansas Republican Mike Pompeo, was grilled by newly elected Senator Kamala Harris of California over the Central Intelligence Agency's human resources and employee benefits policies regarding gays and lesbians…

A year ago, as he prepared to give his final State of the Union speech, President Obama strode the halls of the Capitol while being interviewed by NBC's Matt Lauer. Lauer asked the president, in his friendly and earnest way, if he "takes responsibility" for the fact that Donald Trump was catching…

The Obama administration left top lawmakers, including leaders on the congressional committees charged with overseeing American foreign policy, in the dark about a secret deal to send Iran more than one hundred metric tons of natural uranium, according to statements provided to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The United States will never successfully partner with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Arizona senator John McCain warned Thursday, in an apparent rejection of vows from the president-elect to improve relations with the country.

Reviews and News:

Democrats critical of Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump's choice for education secretary, find plenty of reasons to pillory the school-choice advocate and Republican donor. Plans to improve equal opportunity in public education—growing public charter schools and voucher programs, and testing district…

In the vivid and varied world of 19th-century British literature, Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) endures as a striking footnote. He produced 250 essays published in 21 volumes, along with dabbling in fiction, yet is known today—to the extent he's known at all—for one book, an 1822 memoir of…

Thursday's New York Times has a report on how the highly suspicious dossier alleging that Donald Trump was compromised by Russian intelligence agents came into existence. Among the other interesting revelations was that the dubious opposition research report was put together by the research firm…

In a decision separate from the U.S. inquiries into Russian political interference during the 2016 presidential contest, Washington announced on Monday, January 9, that five prominent individuals inside Russia would be sanctioned. The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added…

All right, so Diana had Britain’s Fascist-in-Chief in tow, smouldering at her across the dinner table and chatting in baby talk down the telephone. But Hitler: do admit. That was something more. The man with the real power, the one who had putsched his way to the top and had the whole of Germany…

Over the weekend BuzzFeed published what it called "the definitive ranking" of Disney animation films. All 56 of them.

President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of state Rex Tillerson denounced the Obama administration Wednesday for a range of moves against Israel and reiterated vows made by the president-elect to bolster relations with the Jewish state.

The January 6 stabbing death of 27-year-old Emilie Inman in Berkeley, California, and the arrest of the alleged killer, 22-year-old University of California-Berkeley undergraduate Pablo Gomez, Jr., who is suspected of stabbing another young Berkeley woman although not fatally, remains shrouded in…

So what did Russia do to influence the election and does it matter?

From the moment Donald Trump picked Senator Jeff Sessions to be the next attorney general, it was clear what Democrats would need to defeat the Sessions nomination: a surprise witness. It was such a witness whose testimony led to the Senate's rejection of Sessions for a federal judgeship in 1986.

In his first press conference since being elected president, Donald Trump thanked the media. He praised news outfits that didn't publish a story about a document that describes alleged Russian efforts to compromise him, even though many of those news organizations had the story for months and held…

The incoming Trump administration should perform a comprehensive review of last summer's Iran nuclear deal and more effectively block Iran's ability to obtain a nuclear weapon, Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state Rex Tillerson said Wednesday.

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

A bill repealing and at least partially replacing Obamacare will be presented to President Trump by the end of February, according to House majority leader Kevin McCarthy and House Ways and Means Committee chairman Kevin Brady.

Florida senator Marco Rubio pointedly asked secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson for his views on the Kremlin's treatment of political foes and activity in Syria during a confirmation hearing Wednesday, making for a tense exchange between the Russia hawk and the former Exxon Mobil CEO whose…

Donald Trump said Wednesday that he believes the hack of emails of officials of the Democratic National Committee was backed by Russia.

A set of memos alleging disturbing ties between President-elect Donald Trump and Russian officials has set off yet another media firestorm concerning Russia's putative role in the 2016 presidential election. Many people have had copies of the memos for some time, but the documents were published…

A big federal investment in infrastructure is one of the few things that Donald Trump has specifically said he wants to pursue early in his presidency. It is not as high a priority for most congressional Republicans, to put it mildly.

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A new report, cited in various media outlets, claims that repealing Obamacare would "cost roughly $350 billion" over a decade and "leave no funds available for 'replacement' legislation." In truth, repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a good conservative alternative would cut federal spending…

Just days after the U.S. military confirmed the existence of an Islamic State (ISIS) drone factory in Iraq, the coalition targeted four more "unmanned aerial vehicle [UAV] construction facilities." The first drone factory was located near Mosul, while the more recent targets were closer to Tal…

President Obama delivered a valedictory speech Tuesday night in his adopted hometown of Chicago before an adoring throng of 18,000 attendees. Enraptured by his own oft-celebrated eloquence, Obama took his good time soaking in the love by delivering a speech that, according to the Washington…

An assembly of pro-Israel leaders will head to Capitol Hill Wednesday to urge support for measures that call to repeal a recent United Nations resolution and to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

To hear Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer tell it, Democrats intend to block the confirmation of any justice President-elect Trump nominates to the Supreme Court. They'll inherit guardianship of the eight-member panel they dreaded just last year—and, by God, they'll guard it with their lives.

Not long after CNN reported that top U.S. intelligence officials had briefed Donald Trump on a document that alleges the Russian government had "compromising personal and financial information" on him, BuzzFeed published what it claimed to be synopsised in the briefing under the dubious…

The North Koreans appear to be preparing to test yet another missile, at any time, this one with a potential range that would put the entire United States—from Los Angeles to New York City—within reach. Last Sunday, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said on Meet the Press that the United States was…

You never can tell about Senate confirmation.

President Obama's farewell address to the nation was longer than the good-bye speeches of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined.

The first day of the confirmation hearing for attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions could have been a zoo. As one of Donald Trump's earliest and most ardent supporters, Sessions might have been the first opportunity for Democrats and the activist left to indirectly channel their opposition to the…

CNN reports that American intelligence officials have briefed Donald Trump on documents that allege the Russian government has "compromising personal and financial information" about the president-elect. Details about the existence of this compromising information have been circulating among…

Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly spoke about border security and Russian meddling in U.S. political activity during a confirmation hearing for his nomination to be Secretary of Homeland Security Tuesday, telling a Senate panel he has "high confidence" in the Intelligence Community's assessment that…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on Trump's appointments, and conflicts.

"Fake news"! The phrase was such a handy hammer for liberals to pound the heads of conservatives—until conservatives grabbed the hammer and started pounding liberals, pointing out some of the fakery that liberals had fallen for. How dare they? So now the liberal mantra is: We must retire that…

"[The British monarchy's] mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic." —Walter Bagehot To a certain degree, Bagehot's law was adopted as well by American presidents, whose status was upheld by a tradition of decorum and whose prestige was accentuated by a certain—well, mystery.…

President-elect Donald Trump may have cranked up the heat on Republican lawmakers working to repeal and replace Obamacare, telling the New York Times the two goals must be accomplished "together" in an interview published Tuesday.

President-elect Trump's pick for education secretary just had her nomination hearings delayed a week, but the media aren't wasting any time lining up breathless attacks on Betsy DeVos. At Politico, there's this astonishing headline: "DeVos' donations spark questions about her stance on campus…

In this week's edition of the Kristol Clear newsletter, editor at large William Kristol has announced another contest for readers with the potential for great prizes! (And be sure to sign up for Kristol Clear and our other great newsletters.)

When Cory Booker makes history today as the first sitting senator to testify against a fellow senator nominated to a White House cabinet position, it would be wise to keep in mind his record of weaving fictional tales to serve his political goals.

2015 was the year campus culture wars broke out into mainstream consciousness—from Laura Kipnis's Title IX witch trial to the Halloween costume crisis at Yale's Silliman College, the dark side of trigger warnings and microaggressions met the harsh light of public debate.

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The Obama administration has one week to hand over all documents involving a United Nations resolution critical of Israel to a congressional committee, amid allegations from Israeli officials that the administration worked behind the scenes to pass the resolution.

American TV has become the equivalent of India's Bollywood—an almost unimaginably prolific source of filmed entertainment. Bollywood produces more than a thousand movies a year, more than double Hollywood's output. Similarly, the networks and cable channels and streaming services have been…

To promote Barack Obama's final public address as president Tuesday in Chicago, the White House invokes a tradition established by the Father of Our Country, President Washington. "Since George Washington, U.S. presidents have often delivered a final address to the American people," the White House…

South Carolina senator Tim Scott says he will support his fellow Republican senator, Jeff Sessions, for attorney general. In a statement released late on the eve of Sessions's confirmation hearing, Scott allowed that while he and the Alabama senator "may not agree on everything", he would…

Hillary Clinton, fresh off her defeat by Donald J. Trump, is said to be considering a comeback via a run for mayor of New York City this very year. Or at least some powerful New York Democrats who can't stand current Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio—thanks partly to the dirtier, more disorderly…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Jonthan V. Last on Obama's legacy, his farewell speech, and the coming days of Trump.

Writing in the Wealth of Nations in 1776, Adam Smith stated that, "corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity (sic)." Faced with a growing population and flattening agricultural productivity, essentially what Smith was pointing out was the world needed more corn and less silver.

Senator Jeff Sessions begins confirmation hearings on Tuesday to become the next attorney general. Since President-elect Donald Trump nominated the Alabama Republican to the post in November, critics have resurrected old allegations that Sessions is racist. The allegations were first made in the…

What is the Francis Effect? Recent surveys show that despite all the hype since Jorge Mario Bergoglio first became pope in March 2013, there has been little change in how often Roman Catholics in America attend Mass. This is not to say, though, that the pope has not deeply changed the lives of many…

On Sunday, January 8, an editorial in The Guardian pointed out correctly, “whatever else there is to say about Russia's alleged involvement in the 2016 US election, do not make the mistake of saying that such a thing is unprecedented—because it is not." Indeed, anyone who thinks there is no…

Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump, will serve his father-in-law Donald Trump as senior advisor to the president. NBC News has the story:

As the Prufrock newsletter noted Monday morning, students at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies have asked for a "decolonized" curriculum—lighter on the dead white guys, in other words.

Last week Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the principal architect of the Islamic Republic, died of a heart attack at 82. The former parliamentary speaker, two-term president, and chairman of various powerful bodies leaves behind a mixed political legacy.

The late 1980s and early '90s were characterized by liberal optimism, if not triumphalism. The Berlin Wall had fallen and the Soviet Union had dissolved, marking the end of the Cold War. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama had written an influential article entitled "The End of History," which argued that…

The Nation is publishing its gala hagiographic Obama send-off issue—"The Obama Years: 2008-2016"—and does so perhaps more in sadness than in celebration. The articles are full of complaint and recriminations—but not, for the most part, aimed at the Dear Leader.

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Normally, when one hears left-leaning members of Congress complain about outsourcing to save money, it usually is directed at a corporation.

Less than a fortnight after his successor was elected, Barack Obama got to work on shaping his legacy. "I'm extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations," he said. On January 1, White House consigliere Valerie…

Former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, a so-called Iranian moderate and pragmatist, died Sunday at 82.

We shouldn't doubt that President Obama will read the new book by the liberal journalist Jonathan Chait. The title alone will be enough to grab him: Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail. He will read it slowly and carefully, Montblanc at the ready to…

In late December 2015, Japan and South Korea reached an agreement regarding Korean sex slaves taken during World War II—the thousands upon thousands of rape victims whom the Japanese imperial forces euphemistically referred to as "comfort women." After decades of denial, obfuscation, and…

They are keening in the Bay Area. "Oh, America, what have we done?" wrote a San Bruno reader to the San Francisco Chronicle the week after November's election. "Many of us feel for President Obama, especially as we watch him gracefully support Donald Trump's transition, knowing Trump's priorities…

One of the most interesting figures in the bible is King Hezekiah—reformer, builder, and entirely historical, attested to in a passel of extra-biblical sources. New sources have been excavated over the last few weeks.

Earlier Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation, incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told host John Dickerson that President-elect Trump is going to abide by his promise not to reform entitlement programs:

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes joins host Eric Felten to bid farewell to the most prized artifact of President Obama's legacy: Obamacare. Then Andy Ferguson and Phil Terzian share their takes on Obama's legacy and its durability (or lack thereof).

Nat Hentoff, the music critic and columnist, has died at the age of 91. His son reported Hentoff's death on Twitter:

Super Bowl Contest

A bipartisan Senate push to censure the United Nations over a recent anti-Israel resolution is being stalled by a top Republican working to insert language increasing pressure on the U.N., an effort that has left the pro-Israel community seething and will make the measure irrelevant, according to…

Reviews and News:

In Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, Bill Kristol sees a lesson for the GOP in early stumbles out of the 2017 gate: Prepare the battlefield. Also, observations about the South from Kristol, a New York City native, visiting Georgia this week

It promises to be a fracking good year in some of our oil producing regions. To understand why, you need to keep four numbers in mind: $100, $25, $50, and $60. The first is the approximate price of a barrel of crude oil in the summer of 2014, the second the price to which it plunged early in 2016,…

Democratic criticism of Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Education, holds a dark lesson for us all: Sometimes it's just not worth it to tell the truth. In a letter released Thursday, six members of Senate's Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee called into question…

The Obama administration misled top lawmakers about the transfer of billions of dollars in assets to Iran, according to sources in and out of Congress who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, and a range of questions remain about the mechanics of the payments.

President-elect Donald Trump said he has a "constructive meeting and conversation" with officials in the intelligence community Friday. Trump, who has recently cast doubts publicly about intelligence reports that Russian-supported cyber-attacks tried to influence last November's presidential…

Vox interviewed President Obama on Facebook Live Friday. He discussed health care, along with the doomed fate of his health care law. One of the more interesting things he had to say was this:

Oklahoma senator James Lankford, a member of the intelligence committee, said on CNN Thursday that there's no doubt that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic campaign officials.

President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that Mexico will somehow reimburse the United States for the building of a border wall, an apparent response to reports that he wants Congress to fund the project through the appropriations process early this year.

The United States military has confirmed what previously was only hinted at: the Islamic State, otherwise known as ISIS, is producing its own drones—and they are weaponized. A "rocket and unmanned aerial vehicle factory" was among the many targets hit by the coalition near Mosul, Iraq this week.

In case your awareness hadn't been sufficiently raised, the Obama White House, once more in its final weeks, elevated the campus rape narrative that it has helped spin into a panicky national conversation. The "It's On Us" campaign, launched in 2014 to combat "rape culture," bid farewell to its…

Nearly seven years ago, moments before President Obama signed the national healthcare legislation into law, he declared, "When I sign this bill, all of the overheated rhetoric over reform will finally confront the reality of reform."

The New York Times style guide must make for interesting reading. Surely, there's an admonishment somewhere near the top: Insert into any article, no matter how unrelated to the president-elect, a slam on Donald Trump. And if you can dress it up as a "fact check," all the better.

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When it comes to the widening "post-fact," "post-truth" and "fake news" landscape supposedly foisted on naïve Americans by the alt-right, it would be hard to outdo the progressive narrative of how Wisconsin's voter ID law "suppressed" turnout and handed Donald Trump the state's ten electoral votes.

Republicans plan to use a 2006 border security law supported by more than half of Senate Democrats to fund the wall President-elect Donald Trump pledged his administration would construct, Politico reported Thursday. The Secure Fence Act mandated double-layer fencing between particular ports of…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with frequent contributor and Hudson Institute senior fellow Jeffrey H. Anderson on repealing Obamacare, and his related story about how the GOP can avoid being blamed for high premiums.

In President Obama's first inaugural address in January 2009, he declared, rather grandly, "We'll restore science to its rightful place..." The president has often prided himself on his devotion to science, and earlier this year the White House posted "100 Examples of Putting Science in Its…

The Washington Post reports that House Republicans have revived an obscure rule that could prove to be the most significant civil service reform in decades:

When it comes to pushing the Donald J. Trump panic button, hardly anyone has been more industrious than just-retired Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California).

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

We ate black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, the way you are supposed to in the South, where my wife and I were raised. We live in Vermont now, but we were told when we were kids to eat black-eyed peas for luck, and why take chances?

The Obama chapter in American foreign policy ends like the climax of an action movie—with a fireball growing in the distance and filling the screen as a man in silhouette approaches in slow motion and then veers off camera. Barack Obama has set the Middle East on fire, and now it's spreading.

They are keening in the Bay Area. “Oh, America, what have we done?" wrote a San Bruno reader to the San Francisco Chronicle the week after November's election. "Many of us feel for President Obama, especially as we watch him gracefully support Donald Trump's transition, knowing Trump's priorities…

"[The British monarchy's] mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic." —Walter Bagehot To a certain degree, Bagehot's law was adopted as well by American presidents, whose status was upheld by a tradition of decorum and whose prestige was accentuated by a certain—well, mystery.…

We shouldn’t doubt that President Obama will read the new book by the liberal journalist Jonathan Chait. The title alone will be enough to grab him: Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail. He will read it slowly and carefully, Montblanc at the ready to…

Secretary of State John Kerry recently gave a speech highly critical of the Israeli government. Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were outraged; critics, on the other hand, were gratified. And then, just about everyone picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and turned their…

Great Britain has a new tool for combating the very real threat of terrorism—an app.

The late 1980s and early ’90s were characterized by liberal optimism, if not triumphalism. The Berlin Wall had fallen and the Soviet Union had dissolved, marking the end of the Cold War. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama had written an influential article entitled "The End of History," which argued that…

The Nation is publishing its gala hagiographic Obama send-off issue—"The Obama Years: 2008-2016"—and does so perhaps more in sadness than in celebration. The articles are full of complaint and recriminations—but not, for the most part, aimed at the Dear Leader.

I recently sent an email to the editor of the London Times Literary Supplement complaining about his running a longish lead article by a lunatic-of-one-idea feminist who would cite misogyny as the explanation for the behavior of Lady Macbeth, Lucretia Borgia, and the Wicked Witch of the West. He…

For those who will miss the fawning tone and tenor of presidential news coverage to which we have grown accustomed in the age of Obama, there’s always Chinese media and its coverage of the Communist party and its leaders.

Outside the afternoon had already grown sunless and gray as we settled into our seats in eighth-grade English class. Our teacher, without preamble, carefully lowered the tone arm on a rackety portable record player. There was a scratchy pause, and then, unforgettably, we heard a low and sonorous,…

A year ago, as he prepared to give his final State of the Union speech, President Obama strode the halls of the Capitol while being interviewed by NBC’s Matt Lauer. Lauer asked the president, in his friendly and earnest way, if he "takes responsibility" for the fact that Donald Trump was catching…

Democrats are addicted to Obamacare. It has performed poorly, alienated far more people than it has aided, and been a political disaster. Yet Democrats can’t shake it. In 2010, it was the issue that delivered the House to Republicans. In 2014, it gave them the Senate. In 2016, it was one of the…

A big federal investment in infrastructure is one of the few things that Donald Trump has specifically said he wants to pursue early in his presidency. It is not as high a priority for most congressional Republicans, to put it mildly.

Whatever Gary Vikan, former director of the Walters Museum in Baltimore, thinks of the larger world, he has a somewhat jaundiced view of the art world itself, or at least that corner of it that forms his main area of expertise, medieval and Byzantine art. And the impression we are left with from…

What is the Francis Effect? Recent surveys show that despite all the hype since Jorge Mario Bergoglio first became pope in March 2013, there has been little change in how often Roman Catholics in America attend Mass. This is not to say, though, that the pope has not deeply changed the lives of many…

Urban strivers like to insist suburbia is a soul-deadening place to warehouse failed ambition. I, however, feel no need to defend my choice of safer streets, lower taxes, better schools, and local officials who are misguided rather than criminal. In fact, when my wife and I finally abandoned…

Not long ago, I was talking to a Fatah official about Palestinian aspirations, especially his party’s sharp emotions about Hamas, the Palestinian fundamentalist movement that rules Gaza and would gladly overthrow the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. Fear, loathing, secular outrage…

Less than a fortnight after his successor was elected, Barack Obama got to work on shaping his legacy. “I'm extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations," he said. On January 1, White House consigliere Valerie…

All right, so Diana had Britain’s Fascist-in-Chief in tow, smouldering at her across the dinner table and chatting in baby talk down the telephone. But Hitler: do admit. That was something more. The man with the real power, the one who had putsched his way to the top and had the whole of Germany…

In the vivid and varied world of 19th-century British literature, Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) endures as a striking footnote. He produced 250 essays published in 21 volumes, along with dabbling in fiction, yet is known today—to the extent he's known at all—for one book, an 1822 memoir of…

Of President-elect Trump’s tweets since winning the election, the one drawing the greatest criticism may well be his comment last week that the United States "must strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." The next day, his…

American TV has become the equivalent of India’s Bollywood—an almost unimaginably prolific source of filmed entertainment. Bollywood produces more than a thousand movies a year, more than double Hollywood's output. Similarly, the networks and cable channels and streaming services have been…

WHAT DOES THE AMERICAN PUBLIC think about campaign finance reform? Actually, it doesn’t think much about it at all. Though it is rarely mentioned in the typical media story on the subject, campaign finance reform is the epitome of a "Beltway issue": one that greatly concerns pundits, reporters,…

The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to condemn a United Nations resolution critical of Israeli settlements as anti-Israel and one-sided, in a rebuke of the Obama administration's decision to allow the resolution to pass.

As far back as we can remember, we always wanted to be a podcast. But tempers flare: Sonny tells Jonathan to go get his shine box. Achievement Unlocked for JVL! And Vic claims his favorite Christmas present was a summer sausage--can you beat it? Designer jeans, bourbon at sea, and yet even more…

Former senator and U.S. Ambassador to Germany Dan Coats is President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Director of National Intelligence, according to multiple reports, with a formal announcement expected as soon as Friday.

Top U.S. intelligence officials doubled down Wednesday on assessments that the Kremlin led a campaign to influence the 2016 election, with the country's intel chief blaming Russia for more than just data "hacking."

Two of the country's top intelligence officers say the man behind the WikiLeaks organization, Julian Assange, has no credibility and has done damage to the United States.

Far be it for me to mock another publication's typos. But this screamer from Thursday's Express, a free daily tabloid put out for the Washington Post for subway commuters, deserves some kind of recognition. Here it is:

Editor at large Bill Kristol warned Trump supporters against justifying President-elect Donald Trump's doubts about intelligence assessments affirming Kremlin attempts to sway the results of the 2016 election. Trump has reaffirmed those doubts in recent days by siding with WikiLeaks founder Julian…

Police tell the Chicago Tribune that four black people who earlier this week broadcast live on Facebook their violent attack on a white man with special needs could be charged with hate crimes. The attackers were shown to be yelling about Donald Trump and race. The Tribune has more:

President-elect Trump is set to take office on January 20th. This week, the website of the city of San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit system listed an event marking the inauguration of the soon-to-be 45th president. The event is entitled "Inauguration Day P*ssy March."

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When it comes to trying to decide what the worst part of Obamacare is, there's no shortage of contenders. From a constitutional standpoint, the worst part is its unprecedented individual mandate. From the standpoint of the republic's overall well-being, the worst part is its consolidation and…

There were two stories before Christmas that pointed to the possibility that we are now living in an alternate universe, or have diverged onto a new timeline, or pick your Fringe metaphor.

Tom Perriello, the one-term Democratic congressman from Virginia, will run for governor in this year's election. Jonathan Martin at the New York Times reports:

Although Charles Manson undoubtedly made a mark on American culture, his story actually began in Cincinnati.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with deputy online editor Chris Deaton on Obamacare's future in 2017.

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…

Republican senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham are joining forces to propose legislation that will cut off American taxpayer funding of the United Nations until the international body reverses its December 24 Security Council resolution on Israel.

Comedian Rob Schneider decided to make paella, and got himself into a paella pan of hot water thanks to the culinary-correctness police.

During an interview with Sean Hannity that aired Tuesday night, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asserted: "We have the trust of our sources, we have the trust of our readers, having never got it wrong."

Top GOP officials say their first order of business in the new year is to repeal and replace Obamacare. But the first order itself has a clear first step.

President Barack Obama's administration has indisputably done more to advance the LGBT agenda than any prior administration. Ending Don't Ask-Don't Tell for the military, vigorous support of gay marriage, and bathroom choice for the transgendered are only a few of the boxes checked off the LGBT…

Arkansas senator Tom Cotton blasted Barack Obama for his accommodation of Russian aggression over the past eight years and argued that Russia has committed "crimes and transgressions against the United States and our interests" while the administration "looked the other way." Speaking to Tucker…

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Richmond

Nothing rings my Schadenfreude chimes louder than a tale of a trendy-liberal professor teaching at a fancy college getting...royally hosed by another trendy-liberal professor teaching at a fancy college. Especially when the scene of the liberal-on-liberal hosing is California, home of likely the…

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

The new minority leader in the Senate, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, said Tuesday he would "absolutely" attempt to keep open the Supreme Court seat once held by the late justice Antonin Scalia. "It's hard for me to imagine a nominee that Donald Trump would choose that would get Republican…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Michael Warren on the House GOP's Office of Congressional Ethics foibles in the newly gaveled in 115th Congress.

The House formally reelected Paul Ryan to the speakership Tuesday in a vote that was tamer than what the GOP majority has endured in recent years, with only one of his party colleagues defecting.

The House GOP majority reversed course Tuesday on a move that would have weakened an independent congressional watchdog, after party leaders, including President-elect Donald Trump, voiced their opposition to the original action.

Donald Trump gently criticized the House Republican conference Tuesday for approving a rule change that would curb the powers of an independent ethics office in Congress. Taking to Twitter, the Republican president-elect said Congress should focus instead on taxes and health care first.

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Reuters reports with an exclusive:

The following is an excerpt from the Kristol Clear newsletter. Sign up for the weekly newsletter here.

Politico reports:

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…

Majority leader Kevin McCarthy and Foreign Affairs committee chairman Ed Royce announced Monday night that the House of Representatives will hold a vote Thursday on a resolution blasting last month's United Nations Security Council resolution regarding Israeli settlements. The Obama administration…

Moscow

The Washington Post reports:

When Donald Trump campaigned last spring in the Republican primaries, he touted his tax cuts in a special way. To give them credibility, he would declare proudly that economist Larry Kudlow loved them.

At the New York Post, Daniel Halper reports on the launch of a new quarterly journal, American Affairs:

The crosstabs of the latest YouGov poll show that the majority of Democrats have embraced a reading of the November election that is conspiratorial and false:

The following is an excerpt from the Kristol Clear newsletter. Sign up for the weekly newsletter here.

In the latest episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol, the WEEKLY STANDARD editor at large speaks with National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg about politics and culture. Watch the video below, via the Foundation for Constitutional Government:

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…

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Russian president Vladimir Putin is already waging a war against the West and American hegemony—if only leaders in the United States would look at the evidence. That's what Molly K. McKew argues in a new feature at Politico magazine.

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…

Who is the greatest Spanish artist who ever lived? Though it's light on writers and composers, and has only the one architect—Gaudi—Spain has a rich history of great painters; Goya, Dali, Miro, Juan Gris, El Greco. Really, though, there are only three contenders for the Spain's-greatest-artist…

The New Year