439 articles
One day after audio surfaced of her questioning the implications of blocking Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch, Senator Claire McCaskill announced Friday that she would back a filibuster of his confirmation vote, moving the upper chamber closer to the potential "nuclear option" of…
In the fall of 1977—40 years ago now, when we were freshmen at Georgetown—four of us climbed up to steal the hands off the clock on the tower of Healy Hall, 150 feet or so above the quad.
In early 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species—published in Britain in November 1859—became a topic of conversation among a number of New England intellectuals. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau read the Origin. So did Bronson Alcott, the father of…
Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office released a report projecting that federal budget deficits will more than triple over the next thirty years. That will lead to record levels of debt for the U.S. federal government.
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The left's favorite scribbler on spiritual subjects, Reza Aslan, caused a small fuss recently with the first episode of his new CNN religion series: He participated in a little ritual cannibalism. But eating human brains isn't the only zombie-like behavior by the Iranian-American author: There is…
There once was an informal editorial motto that guided the selection of topics in Style, the Washington Post lifestyle section: "If a story is worth doing, it's worth doing every year." But in the age of Trump, that schedule has become rather compressed: The Post is now doing the same article about…
Remember how the media vowed, right around President Trump's inauguration, that it was going to be no more Mr. Nice Guy for them? They were going to dive deeply into the innards of his administration with tough-minded shoe-leather investigative reporting that would reveal the Trump White House to…
Michael Flynn, the short-tenured national security advisor for President Trump, is offering to testify to both the FBI and the congressional intelligence committees about possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia in exchange for immunity. The Wall Street Journal had the scoop…
"In any election,” Tom Coburn often says, “you should vote for the candidate who will give up the most if they win.” All things being equal, we should prefer politicians who have accomplished something in their lives beyond government work—and who are willing to sacrifice it, at least temporarily,…
In the early spring of 1843, John James Audubon, perhaps the greatest naturalist America has ever produced, traveled up the Missouri River. He had embarked on a project that he hoped would rival the success of his Birds of America.
"TO EDUCATE A PERSON in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society." A century ago Teddy Roosevelt reminded Americans of this ancient truth, and sometime in the past half-century we started to forget it. Students must be left free, it was said, to choose their own morals. The…
There was a day in the not-too-distant past when physicians were respected, even revered, as learned professionals. We understood that doctors followed a “higher calling." Indeed, physicians were expected to adhere to a code of conduct—epitomized by the Hippocratic Oath's venerable injunction, "do…
There once was an informal editorial motto that guided the selection of topics in Style, the Washington Post lifestyle section: “If a story is worth doing, it's worth doing every year." But in the age of Trump, that schedule has become rather compressed: The Post is now doing the same article about…
After the failure of the American Health Care Act (AHCA)—the House Republican alternative to Obamacare—there was plenty of blame to go around. President Donald Trump pointed his finger at the House Freedom Caucus (HFC), the group of 30 or so conservatives who largely opposed the bill, tweeting,…
Picture in your mind, for a moment, the Monopoly man. You know, the guy in the Parker Brothers board game who has a top hat and white handlebar mustache. He makes his money in real estate and railroads. Think how he probably invested that money.
Read history: so learn your place in Time; / And go to sleep: all this was done before.
We opened the New York Times last week, and were sadly unsurprised to read an article that began thusly:
Kamakura, Japan
Until its final scene, there isn’t a moment in the new live-action version of Beauty and the Beast that wasn't done better in the 1991 animated film from which it derives.
In 1860, during the Second Opium War, the British and French armies sacked the Chinese Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan), looting it of what the Chinese government today estimates to have been 150 million objects. The British effort was led by James Bruce, the eighth Earl of Elgin, and with his blessing…
"The flower crown, a go-to accessory for Coachella fashionistas, has its share of critics. Flower crowns are basic, they’ve been done, but hey, at least they're not Native American headdresses.
The late columnist Robert Novak had a favorite saying about the GOP: “The only reason God created Republicans was to cut taxes." And the 1980s were a perfect world for doing so.
In early 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species—published in Britain in November 1859—became a topic of conversation among a number of New England intellectuals. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau read the Origin. So did Bronson Alcott, the father of…
Today, when literary criticism—especially the close reading of lyric poetry—has become a suspect discipline, largely dismissed for its elitism and irrelevance to the political order, Michael Wood's elegant and concise study of the great British literary critic William Empson (1906-1984) is…
The left’s favorite scribbler on spiritual subjects, Reza Aslan, caused a small fuss recently with the first episode of his new CNN religion series: He participated in a little ritual cannibalism. But eating human brains isn't the only zombie-like behavior by the Iranian-American author: There is…
The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in His heaven— All's right with the world! —"Pippa's Song," Robert Browning, 1841 As momentous events like the NCAA basketball finals and Major…
In the fall of 1977—40 years ago now, when we were freshmen at Georgetown—four of us climbed up to steal the hands off the clock on the tower of Healy Hall, 150 feet or so above the quad.
Comprehensive tax reform, done right, would accomplish many things: It should boost investment, productivity, and employment, and along with these economic growth. That is the intent, anyway.
Seoul
No politician is bigger than the game. This is not a lesson unique to President Donald Trump, though he doubtless has a new appreciation for how entrenched Washington is in its ways. But it may be a revelation to some of the millions who voted for him, energized by a pledge that this would finally…
The New York Times reports that two White House officials were involved in uncovering and distributing intelligence reports that wound up in the hands of House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes last week. "Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra…
Republican Russia hawks, including Florida senator Marco Rubio, suffered from the Kremlin's early attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election, an expert told lawmakers Thursday.
Late in the Obama administration, the Department of Health and Human Services enacted a rule to stop states from defunding Planned Parenthood. On Thursday afternoon, the Senate voted 51-50 to overturn that rule.
The impending filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch continues apace, but one Democrat is on record questioning whether Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer's plan to return the favor after the Senate GOP stymied Merrick Garland's nomination will backfire.
On this week's episode, the Mighty Morphin' Substandard discusses Hollywood's need to reboot—from Power Rangers and CHiPs to The Fugitive and Starsky & Hutch and everything in between. Vic eulogizes Chuck Barris, JVL discovers the Popsicle Twins, and Sonny hates "the remix culture people." All on…
April 4 rapidly approaches, the day that Winston Smith begins his illicit diary in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is thus the day that indie theaters across the country have chosen for a protest-screening of the 1984 movie version of George Orwell's dystopian tale. The movie houses are calling out, of…
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There's a small movie coming out about Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Unless you're over a certain age and/or deeply invested in the intersection of the law and religious freedom, this name might not mean much to you. But half a century ago Madalyn Murray O'Hair was reasonably famous. She founded the group…
A few weeks ago Wellesley College invited Laura Kipnis to give a talk. Kipnis is not an especially controversial figure. She is a professor of media studies at Northwestern who teaches film and seems to be generally in line with old-guard feminism. Her one deviation was a piece she wrote for the…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
It's official: Ivanka Trump is now an employee of the federal government. The daughter of President Donald Trump and wife of senior adviser Jared Kushner, Ivanka is making official what was already clear from her frequent appearances alongside her father at the White House and last week's news that…
The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee vowed to thoroughly assess the intelligence community's conclusions on Russian election interference Wednesday, steering clear of the controversies plaguing their House intel counterparts.
Despite being forums to question and receive testimony from public officials and experts, House committee hearings often rank near Cher's Twitter feed as informative sources of information about politics and government. Sometimes this is because of the prevarication of the witnesses. Almost always…
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on President Trump's revived efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.
New York
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said that the FBI is still not fully cooperating with the committee's request for information pertaining to its Russia investigation, which includes the leaks that precipitated the resignation of former national security adviser General Mike Flynn.
"Degradation of ISIS is not the end goal," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week. In what appeared to be a criticism of the Obama White House's ineffective campaign against the Islamic State, the Trump administration's top diplomat insisted, "We must defeat ISIS." At a two-day summit…
I'm about to do something that my eminently sensible father would have disapproved of: write a check to a politician. True, it is to be a small check, one for only $200, but its recipient, the alderwoman of the first ward in Evanston, Illinois, my ward, seems to me an exceptional person. Still,…
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A large swath of the population—mostly on the left—thinks the American coal industry is dead or dying. But another large portion of the population—mostly on the right—thinks the coal industry is primed for a comeback.
On the morning of March 16, according to a police report, a 14-year-old girl attending Rockville High School in the Maryland suburb was allegedly pushed into a stall in a boys' bathroom and raped repeatedly by two males, Henry Montano, age 17, and Jose Sanchez Milian, age 18, who were also enrolled…
There are two related but separate issues regarding House Intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes's revelation last week that identifying information about associates of the Trump campaign and transition team was collected by and distributed within the intelligence committee.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on why President Trump is unlikely to get Democratic cooperation in Congress.
One of President Donald Trump's most urgent policy priorities is to cut taxes for businesses and workers. It's a promise that Republicans must fulfill if they want to restore American prosperity. But the tax plan—which one of us, Moore, helped write—has a $2 trillion to $4 trillion revenue…
One of the more prescient essays in recent years is Jody Bottum's "The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas," which I'm proud to say was published in THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The essay posits that religious ideas are transforming politics as we know it, only instead of the hand-wringing about the Moral…
Another veteran Republican senator is ready to thwart an unprecedented filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
Saudis, Russia, shale. That is all ye need to know in order to understand the oil market. The Saudis lead the OPEC oil cartel, Russia is their largest potential fellow traveler, and the Permian Basin in the Southwest is the oil-rich shale that stands between the other two and $100 per barrel oil.
I was, and I remain, one of the few people on this earth willing to state for the record that I thought the 2005 Peter Jackson version of King Kong was terrific. Indeed, I've long been of the opinion that most people who have condemned that picture didn't actually see it. It's long and…
A photograph of 14-year-old Emmett Till's mutilated face snapped during his open-casket funeral in Chicago made international news in the fall of 1955. For supposedly flirting with a white woman (the woman finally admitted this year that she'd lied in her testimony) while visiting Southern…
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Many theater buildings in Washington house more than one stage. Generally they are at opposite ends of a long hall, or one is tucked away in a spare corner. It is far more unusual for the stages to be stacked on top of one another, as they are in Studio Theatre, where the two stages are connected…
Last Saturday night my husband I accomplished what few have ever accomplished: We got a table in a little over a half-hour at Bad Saint, the craved-after Washington, D.C., restaurant which doesn't take reservations and where the scenesters start lining up for dinner out on the sidewalk as early as…
In the time since President Trump's March 4 tweets alleging he had his "'wires tapped' in Trump Tower" shortly before last year's election by President Obama, there's been no evidence revealed that strictly supports his claim. Trump opponents view this lack of evidence as proof the president made…
Top Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee spurned a request from the panel's Democratic ranking member Monday night to have chairman Devin Nunes recuse himself from an investigation into Russia and intelligence gathering related to the Trump transition.
It seems that President Trump handed German Chancellor Angela Merkel a bill when she visited the United States—for almost $400 billion. That represents the amount Trump reckons is due to cover Germany's failure to meet its commitment to support NATO to the tune of 2 percent of its GDP, plus…
A special micro episode of the WEEKLY SUBSTANDARD Podcast where JVL, Sonny, and Vic analyze the trailer for Zack Snyder's latest opus.
In a flash, Washington changed. With the collapse of their health care plan, the political power of President Trump and congressional Republicans took a hit. And since power is a zero-sum game, Democrats, the bureaucracy, liberal interest groups, and the media were big winners.
Senate Democrats delayed a committee vote Monday on Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch to next week, with the top Democrat on the judicial panel citing the failed appointment of Merrick Garland, interest-group spending in support of Gorsuch, and the jurist's answers about past High Court…
Who knew criminal justice reform would come with iPad knockoffs? The Hoosier state's department of corrections has proposed putting computer tablets "in every Indiana inmate's hands," the Indianapolis Star reports. The electronic devices will come with the potential to access self-help materials,…
Earlier this month, the Trump White House unveiled its budget blueprint, which shifts federal spending priorities from domestic programs to national defense. The Office of Management and Budget proposed cuts of $54 billion to departments like Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and…
From the Foundation for Constitutional Government:
From the Foundation for Constitutional Government:
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It was the Huffington Post headline that caught my eye:
The contest for loneliest person on the right in Donald Trump's Washington would be hard fought among free traders, pro-immigration libertarians, neoconservative globalists, and fiscal hawks convinced of the necessity of entitlement reform. But none of these could possibly be as lonely as the…
This is a revolt of the masses, in this case masses of economic students from around the world who came of age during the 2008 financial crisis and have united in a movement they call Rethinking Economics. The leaders of the movement, which according to the Guardian has grown to 43 student…
"Learning styles"! That's the idea—trumpeted for decades in education schools and school districts across the country—that children have many different individual ways of absorbing classroom material, and it's up to the teacher to present that material in ways that accommodate all of those…
No doubt many WEEKLY STANDARD readers have heard the news about the "Big Bend" skyscraper planned for 57th street in Manhattan, just below Central Park. It will be a giant, upside-down U that looks a little like the St. Louis arch, if someone told it to stand up straight. It was an eye catching…
"There could have been more outreach to conservative groups."
The State Department censured Russian authorities for detaining peaceful protesters Sunday as anti-corruption demonstrations swept the country, according to a statement provided to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
On The Right Question, editor at large William Kristol joins Timothy P. Carney and Hugo Gurdon the Washington Examiner to discuss the failure of the American Health Care Act and what it means for President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan's relationship and the GOP's ability to govern.
It costs a bundle to attend Pitzer College, an elite liberal-arts institution in Claremont, California, that used to be a women's college and still skews female (57 percent of its 1,000 or so students). Tuition and fees alone are $48,670 a year, and when you throw in room and board, the price jumps…
If Venice dies, we will be left with nothing but the dozens of cities and suburbs with Venice in their name and Disney-like replicas in Las Vegas, Dubai, and Chongqing, along with yet another being proposed right next to Venice itself. If Venice dies, the world would lose “an unbearable challenge…
Elliott Green's "Human Nature" is one of the early hits of the 2017 art scene. Showing at the Pierogi Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (it closes March 26), Green's show won praise from critics across the spectrum, including the New York Times, and the more specialized art press. His…
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Michael Warren joins host Eric Felten to talk about how the Obamacare repeal legislation fell apart. Then, Jenna Lifhits stops by to confab about the maybe scandals involving the Russian connection and Obama administration snooping.
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When America sneezes, the world catches a cold. When our Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates, world currencies move, commodity prices jump or slump. When America changes its trade policies, world leaders worry and try to respond. And when an American president who believes climate change is…
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee accused the panel's Republican chairman Devin Nunes of "cancelling" an open hearing on Russian election interference on Friday. The rebuke came after Nunes said he was postponing the hearing until after the committee hears closed testimony from…
Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, where Bill argues that—like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before him—Trump could benefit from an early setback like the failure of the Obamacare repeal/replace bill. So, what should Trump focus on now?
This is an updated version of an article that appears in the April 3, 2017, issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
In a short briefing of reporters in the Oval Office late Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump said he was "disappointed" and "a little surprised, to be honest," that the American Health Care Act did not have the votes to pass the House of Representatives. Flanked by Vice President Mike Pence…
President Trump is "moving on" from health care after the House scuttled a planned Friday afternoon vote on the White House-backed American Health Care Act, says a senior White House aide.
Republicans pulled out all the stops but ultimately pulled the bill.
The top spokesman for President Trump declined to rule out that someone at the White House may have given or alerted the House Intelligence committee chairman about documents revealing intelligence collection involving Trump campaign associates. On Wednesday California congressman Devin Nunes…
A Pew Research survey released on Thursday indicates that Americans of both parties want employers, not the government, to administer paid family and medical leave.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has volunteered to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, the committee's chairman told reporters Friday.
Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis is no right-winger. A self-described feminist who has written extensively for such publications as Harper's, Slate, Vox, and the New York Times Book Review, her leftist bona fides would not seem to be in question. At least, that was until two years…
In 1917, the war was deadlocked. The previous year, British and French armies suffered horrendous casualties at Verdun and the Somme, and during the latter bloodbath, more than 19,000 of the king's soldiers died on a single day, July 1, 1916. To the east, Russia was in the midst of revolution, and…
Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
Sen. Ted Cruz and House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows have called on Republicans to roll back Obamacare's insurance mandates in the American Health Care Act. These include blanket requirements for coverage of those with pre-existing conditions: Insurers are prohibited from denying…
When congressmen last fall considered cures for what ails the American university (repeal large college endowments' tax exemption to lower tuition costs, they said), a hero emerged in one witness from Kentucky's Berea College, where students labor to learn. Maybe, the unspoken prospect hung in the…
For Donald Trump's domestic agenda, this week was the best of times and the worst of times. First, the best: Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch aced his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary committee. The well-prepared Gorsuch gave a near-perfect performance, sparring easily with…
The contest for loneliest person on the right in Donald Trump’s Washington would be hard fought among free traders, pro-immigration libertarians, neoconservative globalists, and fiscal hawks convinced of the necessity of entitlement reform. But none of these could possibly be as lonely as the…
Earlier this month, the Trump White House unveiled its budget blueprint, which shifts federal spending priorities from domestic programs to national defense. The Office of Management and Budget proposed cuts of $54 billion to departments like Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and…
I'll admit, I have few childhood memories of the nativity scene my grandparents kept on their mantel every Christmas. I recall more clearly the haunting portrait of Santa Claus hanging in the foyer and the towering Christmas tree, with its pink ribbons and bows. And, of course, the bounty of…
April 4 rapidly approaches, the day that Winston Smith begins his illicit diary in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is thus the day that indie theaters across the country have chosen for a protest-screening of the 1984 movie version of George Orwell's dystopian tale. The movie houses are calling out, of…
If Venice dies, we will be left with nothing but the dozens of cities and suburbs with Venice in their name and Disney-like replicas in Las Vegas, Dubai, and Chongqing, along with yet another being proposed right next to Venice itself. If Venice dies, the world would lose “an unbearable challenge…
First lady Melania Trump, looking for a suitable role in her husband’s administration, has declared she will be an advocate for bullied youth.
New York
"Ella Fitzgerald is the only performer with whom I’ve ever worked who made me nervous," Frank Sinatra admitted in a 1959 interview. "Because I try to work up to what she does. You know, try to pull myself up to that height—because I believe she is the greatest popular singer in the world, barring…
Modern thinking about love tries to tame it: to exclude its elements of risk, self-abandon, and its challenges to self-transcendence. It seeks to demythologize love’s dimensions of wonder and gratitude so that they are reduced to problems to be diagnosed with a medical vocabulary and managed by…
Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis is no right-winger. A self-described feminist who has written extensively for such publications as Harper’s, Slate, Vox, and the New York Times Book Review, her leftist bona fides would not seem to be in question. At least, that was until two years…
I was, and I remain, one of the few people on this earth willing to state for the record that I thought the 2005 Peter Jackson version of King Kong was terrific. Indeed, I’ve long been of the opinion that most people who have condemned that picture didn't actually see it. It's long and…
In 1917, the war was deadlocked. The previous year, British and French armies suffered horrendous casualties at Verdun and the Somme, and during the latter bloodbath, more than 19,000 of the king’s soldiers died on a single day, July 1, 1916. To the east, Russia was in the midst of revolution, and…
"Degradation of ISIS is not the end goal,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week. In what appeared to be a criticism of the Obama White House's ineffective campaign against the Islamic State, the Trump administration's top diplomat insisted, "We must defeat ISIS." At a two-day summit…
Who knew criminal justice reform would come with iPad knockoffs? The Hoosier state’s department of corrections has proposed putting computer tablets "in every Indiana inmate's hands," the Indianapolis Star reports. The electronic devices will come with the potential to access self-help materials,…
I'm about to do something that my eminently sensible father would have disapproved of: write a check to a politician. True, it is to be a small check, one for only $200, but its recipient, the alderwoman of the first ward in Evanston, Illinois, my ward, seems to me an exceptional person. Still,…
"The US Public Broadcasting Service is one of the country’s most-trusted national institutions. From dogged reporting on everything from the election to antics in the White House, its flagship news programme is a beacon . . . "
"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.” So Abraham Lincoln wrote on August 24, 1855, to his friend Joshua Speed. Is it melodramatic to worry that the statement appears apt today?
Before Republicans captured Washington, the unyielding conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus were a nuisance. Now, with the GOP in control of the House, Senate, and White House, they’re a roadblock to success.
"It was a half-hour before one of the sparsely attended committee hearings that take place almost every day on Capitol Hill—in this case, a session on energy infrastructure so dry it would not merit even the presence of a C-SPAN camera. But in Al Franken's suite of offices . . . "
This is a revolt of the masses, in this case masses of economic students from around the world who came of age during the 2008 financial crisis and have united in a movement they call Rethinking Economics. The leaders of the movement, which according to the Guardian has grown to 43 student…
Saudis, Russia, shale. That is all ye need to know in order to understand the oil market. The Saudis lead the OPEC oil cartel, Russia is their largest potential fellow traveler, and the Permian Basin in the Southwest is the oil-rich shale that stands between the other two and $100 per barrel oil.
A large swath of the population—mostly on the left—thinks the American coal industry is dead or dying. But another large portion of the population—mostly on the right—thinks the coal industry is primed for a comeback.
One of President Donald Trump’s most urgent policy priorities is to cut taxes for businesses and workers. It's a promise that Republicans must fulfill if they want to restore American prosperity. But the tax plan—which one of us, Moore, helped write—has a $2 trillion to $4 trillion revenue…
On April 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson became only the fourth president to ask Congress for a declaration of war. The others were James Madison, James K. Polk, and William McKinley. Those three wars cost a total of some 30,000 lives.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer announced Thursday morning that he will try to lead fellow Senate Democrats to block an up-or-down vote on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The Democratic leader demanded a new nominee (who takes a liberal approach to constitutional…
Not long ago I visited a friend who'd moved to Silicon Valley to work in the startup industry. He had undergone a baffling change: The formerly sports-jacketed East Coaster had become a gluten-free, paleo-dieting, T-shirt-wearing Burning Man.
The Senate confirmed President Trump's pick for ambassador to Israel Thursday in a near party line vote.
The title of the new horror film Get Out alludes to a brilliant Eddie Murphy stand-up bit that is never mentioned in the movie—but a routine the African-American comedian Jordan Peele, who wrote and directed the movie, surely knows by heart. "I was watching movies like Poltergeist and Amityville…
Last evening, at a neighborhood restaurant, I had a splendid meal, and not the least splendid thing about it was our waiter. He efficiently answered questions about the menu. He refilled our wine glasses at precisely the right moment. He paced delivery of courses—drinks, salad, entree, coffee—at…
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has "no idea" about findings his House counterpart presented Wednesday that Trump transition officials' communications were incidentally collected before the inauguration and potentially improperly disseminated.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with legal expert and Hoover Institution research fellow Adam J. White on the Gorsuch nomination, the forthcoming Democratic filibuster, and a potential deal to restore the filibuster for other judicial nominees as a trade for a Gorsuch confirmation.
Busting terrorist charities here in the United States was a low priority for the last eight years under Barack Obama. It's time for the Trump administration to instruct the bureaucracy to get back into this important fight.
Just how wonderful is the wonderful world of Disney? The Substandard takes on Beauty and the Beast plus best and worst Disney movies. Plus board games! JVL breaks out the Axis & Allies, Vic plots his conquest of Europe, and Sonny hates Monopoly (but loves his Alf Pogs)—all on this week's…
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced his expected plans to vote "no" on Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court and promised that Republicans would have to overcome a Democratic filibuster in order to seat him.
#ShakespeareSoWhite!
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The recently released Lost in Florence is a movie about a young American man who, like the city's greatest poet, recognizes that he has fallen off the straight path and, now lost, must find his way again. Heartbroken and healing from an injury that derailed his professional football career, Eric…
The House of Representatives will vote Thursday on the American Health Care Act, a bill President Donald Trump has enthusiastically endorsed and what the administration considers its best and perhaps only chance to repeal and replace Obamacare. It's the first and possibly biggest test so far of…
The American Health Care Act lost another vote Wednesday night when Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, an ardent pro-lifer and fiscal moderate, announced his opposition to the bill. "The overriding concern I have is the Medicaid expansion being significantly altered," Smith told the Asbury Park Press.…
On a Capitol Hill morning otherwise dominated by Gorsuch hearings, the deafening drip of surveillance revelations, and a possible health care upset, one much quieter event might have presaged what normalcy may, one hopes, come. Alexander Acosta, Labor secretary-designate number two, answered…
Most of the Trump transition members whose communications were allegedly collected via pre-inaugural incidental surveillance had their identities redacted in intelligence reports, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday. The chairman of the committee informed him of that…
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said on Wednesday that the Senate parliamentarian has told him that it may be possible for Republicans to push harder on repealing Obamacare's regulations than the current House bill, which contradicts the assertion by House leadership that the legislation goes after…
The House GOP health bill faces more defections than it can withstand from inside the party's own conference, after a spokeswoman for a conservative caucus announced several no votes on Wednesday, and multiple members have warned that several moderates are also still opposed to the legislation in…
Trump transition officials were caught in incidental surveillance before the inauguration, the chairman of the House Intelligence committee told reporters Wednesday. These individuals had their communications circulated within the intelligence community and their identities revealed internally,…
This afternoon's terrorist attack on the Houses of Parliament in central Westminster left four dead, including the attacker and a police officer, and twenty injured, some seriously. For the third time in a year, a lone killer has used a vehicle as a weapon on the streets of a major European city.…
At some point, our border will be secure, resistance to deporting felons will collapse, and we will have accepted the fact that Dreamers will be allowed to stay in this country, probably on a path to citizenship. That's the easy part.
"I don't know where democracy will end," said the Habsburg statesman Klemens von Metternich, "but it can't end in a quiet old age." Metternich was an architect of a postwar European order—the Concert of Europe, assembled after the defeat of Napoleon. In his old age, he witnessed its disintegration…
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"Hard cases," it's often said, "make bad law." They also make for bad legal commentary, especially in the week of a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, where a nominee's critics try to fault him for failing to side with sympathetic litigants—even when the judge was just following the laws that…
Seoul
Only in Portlandia: Multnomah County, Oregon, has decided to solve its homelessness problem by . . . housing the homeless in the backyards of Multnomah County homeowners.
The Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare is either quite nearly dead or right on-course to become law—depending on which Republican you ask. President Trump's Tuesday trip to Capitol Hill seemed designed to either cajole or intimidate on-the-fence House Republicans to support the bill.…
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the Gorsuch confirmation hearings, and the future of the American Health Care Act.
The process of debt restructuring in Puerto Rico has been, if nothing else, an alarming case study in conflicts of interest, cronyism, and putting politics ahead of doing the right thing. As the island struggles to regain its financial footing under the heavy burden of unfunded liabilities and…
George Osborne, Britain's longtime Chancellor of the Exchequer until the fall of the Cameron government, seems to have raised some eyebrows recently with his announcement that, beginning in May, he will become editor of the [London] Evening Standard. And keep his seat in the House of Commons.
At the SHOT Show in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, I was talking to a man who knew his way around the world of firearms. He had been coming to the show every year and couldn’t remember, precisely, when he had last missed one.
Backed by several letters from his former law students refuting a claim that he advocated employers probing the family planning of female job candidates, Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch explained to a senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee that he facilitated classroom discussion of…
Dante puts Pontius Pilate in the outermost circle of Hell, among the indolent—scant punishment, you might think, for the man who executed Jesus Christ. By letting Pilate off easy, Dante was situating himself firmly on one side of a centuries-old debate: Who was more responsible for killing Christ,…
Los Angeles
President Donald Trump emerged from a meeting with House Republicans Tuesday morning confident that their health care bill would pass the lower chamber this week, even as conservatives continued to express doubts about the legislation's new and arguably improved substance.
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Michael Tolkin is one of America's greatest living novelists—and way too underappreciated, perhaps because of his successes in other genres. He's directed movies, including the 1991 film The Rapture, starring David Duchovny and Mimi Rogers; written screenplays, including The Player, based on his…
Faculty at Wake Forest University are revolting against a multidisciplinary campus institute because of suspicions it is secretly designed to expose students to conservative and libertarian views.
Seoul
Where to begin? Monday was jam-packed with news regarding Donald Trump and his administration. Unfortunately the best news for Trump, a solid first day of hearings for his Supreme Court nominee (more on that below), was overshadowed by the appearance of FBI director James Comey and National…
Russia waged a conspicuous campaign to undermine the American political process and will continue attempting to do so in coming years, top intelligence and law enforcement officials told lawmakers Monday.
Utah senator Mike Lee had a wish for Neil Gorsuch: "You are not a politician, which means that the acrimony, duplicity, and ruthlessness of today's politics are still foreign and unfamiliar to you. May that continue to be true."
In case you didn't notice, the star performer in the Judiciary Committee today was the nominee himself, Judge Neil Gorsuch.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Michael Warren on today's House Intelligence committee meetings on Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election.
During hearings with FBI Director James Comey and Adm. Mike Rogers, several Democrats joined ranking member Adam Schiff (D-CA) in claiming that the GOP's platform position on Russia was weakened at this summer's convention. Democrats suggested this weakening was a result of Russia's influence on…
"When you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others," then-senator Barack Obama told a standing-room-only crowd in 2006 at Xavier University's commencement, "whether they are close friends or distant strangers—it becomes harder not to act, harder not to help."…
In the current issue of The Atlantic, Peter Beinart has an essay arguing that the decline in religiosity among American voters is what allowed for the election of Donald Trump and contributes to the bitter state of American politics:
In this week's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court, look for Democrats to criticize Gorsuch for being too deferential to the Trump Administration—and, at the same time, for not being deferential enough to it.
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One of the greatest pianists who ever lived, Dinu Lipatti, was born 100 years ago yesterday, on March 19, 1917. Lipatti was a child prodigy, a virtuoso pianist and a Romanian who died at 33, just 15 years after his career began. Of course there are many child prodigies who become virtuoso pianists;…
His long trek through more than 70 senators' offices behind him, Judge Neil Gorsuch now comes before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary knowing at least two things for sure. First, he can expect Democratic members to offer uplifting discourses on the vital principle of judicial independence. And…
The Senate Judiciary committee will convene its first day of hearings to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court on Monday. Since President Donald Trump nominated Gorsuch to the seat in late January, the federal judge has pretty much sailed through the pre-hearing process, which…
J. Harvie Wilkinson III is a lawyer whom President Reagan appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. As a judge who writes for his court, Wilkinson is, of course, a legal writer; but here he has written for a general audience. His topic is the 1960s, a decade he knows…
On this week's episode of The Right Question, editor at large William Kristol joins the Washington Examiner's editor Hugo Gurdon and chief political correspondent Byron York to discuss the fate of Obamacare repeal.
Texas senator Ted Cruz, one of the leading critics of the congressional GOP's health reform plan, revealed Sunday that he and two of his colleagues met White House officials at Mar-a-Lago this weekend to discuss changes to the American Health Care Act.
President Donald Trump shied away from sizing up Russian president Vladimir Putin's leadership during an interview aired Saturday, in an apparent divergence from past praise for the Russian leader.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said on Fox News Sunday he "feels very good" about the American Health Care Act's progress in the House on Thursday.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes stops by to talk about all the players trying to break up Donald Trump and Paul Ryan's cozy relationship of convenience. Can they keep it together long enough to get a healthcare bill passed? And Michael Warren walks us through this week at…
Barnard College in New York City isn't a religious school—unless you count the usual genuflections at the altars of diversity, feminism, environmentalism, and the like. Nonetheless, The Scrapbook is proud to bestow upon Barnard—with all due fanfare—the first-ever Weekly Standard St. Augustine Award…
Okay, the McDonald's anti-Trump tweet—"You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have @BarackObama back, also you have tiny hands"—seems to have been a hack job. McDonald's, upon taking the insult down from Twitter after 20 minutes and more than 1,000 likes and…
A key talking point in the theory that Donald Trump and the Russians conspired in the 2016 election is the allegation that last summer, during the Republican convention, the Trump campaign changed the GOP platform to weaken its stance on Russia's aggression in Ukraine.
Princeton economics professor emeritus and Nobel laureate Angus Deaton has been running around making an extraordinary claim: “Being really poor in America is in some ways worse than being really poor in India or Africa," he recently told the National Association for Business Economics. Asked about…
Who doesn’t like a story with a happy ending? In The Weekly Standard last week, in "Berkeley Goes Offline," Andrew Ferguson told the sad tale of disability-rights activists who had filed a complaint against the University of California, Berkeley, claiming that the thousands of hours of classroom…
Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, where he defends the common sense of the American people from liberal elitism, while defending the role of intellectualism in American life; he talks about Angela Merkel's uncomfortable visit with Donald Trump; and bemoans the lack of…
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The president's health care reform and his radical budget: RIP. And with them perhaps the era of The Donald as we have come to know and love or hate it.
As the GOP stumbles out of the gate with Obamacare repeal, Philip Terzian reminds us other administrations have suffered similar struggles, including Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. In fact, the Bill of Rights might be the biggest "manager's amendment" ever.
At the core of the origin story of African-American history—in fact, of all people of African descent in the Western hemisphere—is migration.
Federal judges who are blocking President's Trump new executive order restricting migration are making a mistake, using flawed reasoning, and setting back the larger cause of immigration reform. On Wednesday night, Derrick K. Watson, the U.S. District Judge in Hawaii, penned a 43-page jeremiad in…
The least suggestion of genetic engineering throws rational people into a blind panic, as it should: Man-made innovations threatening to out-mode humanity have freaked out every right-thinking person for most of modern history. This entirely natural anxiety has driven a whole subgenre of…
Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
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The multiple tragedies roiling Venezuela—widespread hunger, political repression, catastrophic inflation—continue apace. The Miami Herald reports:
As mystery continues to swirl around the February resignation of General Mike Flynn, President Trump's first national security adviser, an already-contentious government program that monitors terrorists and helps disrupt their plots is in trouble.
As the Republican alternative to Obamacare winds its tortuous way through Congress, the parallels with the big mistake President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats made eight years ago are unmistakable. Such large changes to society should only be done with a broad coalition, otherwise they…
The Washington Post editorial board picked the wrong day to call Secretary of State Rex Tillerson "silent." Speaking in Seoul Friday, the newly minted diplomat delivered a loud message.
For decades, a favorite pastime of the Washington press corps has been to find "daylight" between the president and the vice president—a difference of opinion, a dislike, a secret irritation. But not any more.
While activity and controversy have consumed the White House over the past few weeks—the rollout of the health-care bill, President Trump's claims he was wire-tapped by President Obama, the travel ban's legal troubles, and the unveiling of the Trump budget—Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch has…
One day in late spring in the early days of the George W. Bush administration, FDA inspectors visited the headquarters of Sargento cheese in Plymouth, Wisconsin—a routine visit as part of the federal government's efforts to ensure the safety of the food we eat. The inspectors took samples of cheese…
For decades, a favorite pastime of the Washington press corps has been to find “daylight" between the president and the vice president—a difference of opinion, a dislike, a secret irritation. But not any more.
New York
I read The Grapes of Wrath—this year celebrating the 75th anniversary of its publication in 1939—the summer after I graduated from a Southern California girls’ high school less than a quarter-century after its author, John Steinbeck (1902-1968), had banged out his socialist-realist magnum opus…
"When you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others,” then-senator Barack Obama told a standing-room-only crowd in 2006 at Xavier University's commencement, "whether they are close friends or distant strangers—it becomes harder not to act, harder not to help."…
"I don’t know where democracy will end," said the Habsburg statesman Klemens von Metternich, "but it can't end in a quiet old age." Metternich was an architect of a postwar European order—the Concert of Europe, assembled after the defeat of Napoleon. In his old age, he witnessed its disintegration…
J. Harvie Wilkinson III is a lawyer whom President Reagan appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. As a judge who writes for his court, Wilkinson is, of course, a legal writer; but here he has written for a general audience. His topic is the 1960s, a decade he knows…
The title of the new horror film Get Out alludes to a brilliant Eddie Murphy stand-up bit that is never mentioned in the movie—but a routine the African-American comedian Jordan Peele, who wrote and directed the movie, surely knows by heart. "I was watching movies like Poltergeist and Amityville…
As the Republican alternative to Obamacare winds its tortuous way through Congress, the parallels with the big mistake President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats made eight years ago are unmistakable. Such large changes to society should only be done with a broad coalition, otherwise they…
As mystery continues to swirl around the February resignation of General Mike Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, an already-contentious government program that monitors terrorists and helps disrupt their plots is in trouble.
Dante puts Pontius Pilate in the outermost circle of Hell, among the indolent—scant punishment, you might think, for the man who executed Jesus Christ. By letting Pilate off easy, Dante was situating himself firmly on one side of a centuries-old debate: Who was more responsible for killing Christ,…
According to the popular-again Alexander Hamilton, “Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government." In light of this requirement and the failure of the Articles of Confederation to meet it, the authors of our Constitution took careful measures to create a…
Not long ago I visited a friend who’d moved to Silicon Valley to work in the startup industry. He had undergone a baffling change: The formerly sports-jacketed East Coaster had become a gluten-free, paleo-dieting, T-shirt-wearing Burning Man.
Conservatives are generally interested in conserving. Defenders of liberal democracy are busy defending. Guardians of the postwar liberal world order spend their time guarding. As they all should.
ON THURSDAY EVENING, August 9, George W. Bush delivered the first prime-time special presidential address of the twenty-first century. No one would have predicted a few months ago—way back in the twentieth century—that a decision on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research would have been…
Julian Barnes has written important novels, from Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) to The Sense of an Ending (2011), as well as much nonfiction. Some of it has been great; some of it, inevitably, a bit less so. But all of it is the product of a subtle, searching, incisive, and witty mind, always riveting…
The pronouncement that “democracies don't go to war with one another" has been a standby of chipper talk-show personalities for most of this century. We might want to reconsider it in light of the way Dutch and Turkish authorities were brought to the brink of an armed confrontation by little more…
Barnard College in New York City isn’t a religious school—unless you count the usual genuflections at the altars of diversity, feminism, environmentalism, and the like. Nonetheless, The Scrapbook is proud to bestow upon Barnard—with all due fanfare—the first-ever Weekly Standard St. Augustine Award…
Last evening, at a neighborhood restaurant, I had a splendid meal, and not the least splendid thing about it was our waiter. He efficiently answered questions about the menu. He refilled our wine glasses at precisely the right moment. He paced delivery of courses—drinks, salad, entree, coffee—at…
At the core of the origin story of African-American history—in fact, of all people of African descent in the Western hemisphere—is migration.
Who doesn’t like a story with a happy ending? In The Weekly Standard last week, in "Berkeley Goes Offline," Andrew Ferguson told the sad tale of disability-rights activists who had filed a complaint against the University of California, Berkeley, claiming that the thousands of hours of classroom…
Newspapers aren’t just throwing Trumpoplectic fits, they're monetizing them. The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times have all rolled out clothing lines tweaking the new president. The most comic is found at the Post website, which features a T-shirt in rock-concert black…
Princeton economics professor emeritus and Nobel laureate Angus Deaton has been running around making an extraordinary claim: “Being really poor in America is in some ways worse than being really poor in India or Africa," he recently told the National Association for Business Economics. Asked about…
At some point, our border will be secure, resistance to deporting felons will collapse, and we will have accepted the fact that Dreamers will be allowed to stay in this country, probably on a path to citizenship. That’s the easy part.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Michael Warren on President Trump's "America First" budget proposal.
Of the 51 Tucker automobiles assembled and ineptly brought to market in 1948, 47 exist today. They're held in the protective clutches of museums and private collectors. The car that Preston Tucker originally planned to sell for $1,000—dubbed the "Tin Goose" in its prototype stage—can nowadays…
Politico reports that funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be eliminated in the Trump administration's proposed budget:
On February 27 the Supreme Court turned down an appeal in a case from Colorado that would have decided whether nonprofit organizations that run issue advertisements during election campaigns can be compelled to disclose the names and addresses of their donors. This was one of several cases making…
Pensacola, Fla.
A debate over the military's budget is emerging between defense hawks on Capitol Hill and fiscal hawks in the Trump administration. The fiscal hawks, chief among them Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, want the next annual defense budget set at $603 billion, a 3 percent…
A few years ago I wrote a piece where I asked whether or the '00s had been worse than the '70s. At the time, I thought it was a close call, one that could go either way. Today, I'm not so sure.
King Kong ain't got s—t on the Substandard! This week the show tackles Kong: Skull Island and the monster movie universe. Jonathan explains why size matters—when it comes to King Kong vs. Godzilla. (Don't even get Sonny started on Peter Jackson's King Kong.) And Vic admits to his fear of moths.…
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Signs inside in this season's hot-ticket exhibit encourage visitors, or "viewers," as art critics still insist on calling them, to be the show. It's a concession, common nowadays across the art world, to the fact that most people's vanity overwhelms their interest in fine art: Museums might as well…
I am not generally a fan of President Trump, Trumpism, the alt-right, or anonymous internet trolls. But on the other hand, you have to pay respect where it's due. Let us now discuss the greatest act of pro-Trump trolling, ever.
One of the conservative sticking points in judging the House GOP's health plan has been the measure's treatment of "non-budget"-related items. Under the legislative mechanism Republicans are using to move the American Health Care Act, the bill's particulars must have an impact on spending and…
NCAA office pools once served a special societal purpose. Before the advent of tweeting, they were the one communal activity in which the entire populace could weigh in on things it knew absolutely nothing about. (Well, that, and elections.)
Over the weekend, a personnel dispute within the National Security Council between the national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, and senior White House aides Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon was eventually brought to President Trump himself. As Politico reported Tuesday evening, Trump overruled…
The House Intelligence Committee will subpoena information from law enforcement and intelligence agencies if necessary to investigate potential surveillance violations tied to former Trump national security adviser General Mike Flynn, the committee's chairman said Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate for the second time in three months on Wednesday, a signal that the principals of the banking system view the economy's health as stable.
The superhero movie Logan doesn't look, sound, or behave like any other superhero movie ever made. It's set around El Paso and the Mexican border town of Juarez, then in Oklahoma, and finally in North Dakota. It's dusty and gritty and mostly rural, entirely unlike the nine world-capital-hopping…
In an interview with the Washington Examiner two months into President Trump's administration, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) reflected on the president's ascent to America's highest office, offering fresh insights from his vantage point as a libertarian-leaning representative smack in the heart of…
"To put it in a nutshell," João Carlos Espada tells us, his book "aims at providing an intellectual case for liberal democracy." This aim puts The Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty on a crowded shelf of mostly desiccated husks. What gives his work vitality is his wish to clarify why European…
Kim Jong-un's decision to take out his half-brother Kim Jong-nam, with the assassins using an internationally banned chemical agent to do it, is not the usual mode of operation for North Korea's first family. While the Kims of Pyongyang have not hesitated to purge hundreds by some of the most…
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Early Tuesday afternoon, a senior GOP House aide mapped out a short path through the House for the American Health Care Act (legislation that repeals and replaces parts of Obamacare): Due to the snowstorm on the East Coast, the Budget committee hearing would be pushed back from Wednesday to…
An Obama administration guidance, sidestepping law to serve an albeit well-meaning social agenda, may have deepened the very injustice it was meant to correct. Haven't I heard this one before?
In the hour it was reported with smothering ubiquity that the GOP's Obamacare replacement would cause 24 million individuals to "lose" insurance, the debate about government health care policy was given a bucket of buffalo wings, a wet nap, and a day off. It was about to get sloppy and awfully lazy.
Another day with the same big and frustrating story for the Trump administration: The effort to repeal and replace Obamacare is not going well. The House bill continues to lose supporters publicly, and not just from the far-right Freedom Caucus.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with deputy online editor Chris Deaton on why "losing coverage" is a mistaken focus in evaluating the CBO's estimates of the GOP health bill.
Trusting the process makes for good life advice and bad legislating. The morning after congressional Republicans released their Obamacare replacement, dubbed the American Health Care Act, conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham complained it lacked the "Trumpism of the health care reform" the…
Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch has been well-received on Capitol Hill ahead of the start of his confirmation hearings next week, raising the possibility that Democrats won't filibuster his nomination.
Allison Stanger, the Middlebury College professor who ended up in a neck brace after protests at the private Vermont institution spiraled out of control, wrote a piece in the New York Times Monday reflecting on the mob scene that transpired.
The worst stage performance I ever saw was If Then, an off-Broadway production about hip young adults, standing around, wearing leather satchels, drinking coffee, and singing loudly about big life decisions. Besides having an irritating syllogistic title that wouldn't allow you to forget your own…
A few years ago, an adjunct professor and disability-rights activist named Stacy Nowak went to take a look at a college course offered online by the University of California, Berkeley. The course was called "Journalism for Social Change." Nowak is deaf. She has no connection to UC Berkeley; she…
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During my teaching days, along with courses on Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Willa Cather, I taught an undergraduate course called Advanced Prose Style. What it was advanced over was never made clear, but each year the course was attended by 15 or so would-be—or, as we should say today,…
Until he roared back onto the scene with his sure-to-please declaration that a free press was "indispensable to democracy," George W. Bush hadn't said too much since leaving the public eye in 2009. During the Obama years, we'd heard more from Will Ferrell as Bush than from Bush himself.
Idomeneo is the earliest of Mozart's major operas and, traditionally, the least popular. It opened in Munich in 1781, a year before the Vienna debut of The Abduction from the Seraglio, which was a smash-hit. In Munich, a press notice praised Idomeneo's set design but forgot to mention Mozart.…
For roughly two decades, the United States enjoyed a marked decline in its crime rates. Burglaries, murders, other violent crimes—they all fell steadily. That promising age ended as 2014 gave way to 2015. For the past two years, crime has been rising. And alarmingly, it is violent…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
The Congressional Budget Office is finally out with its analysis of the Trump-backed American Health Care Act, and the results are, well, not great, Bob! The big headline, and the big headache for the White House, is the estimate that in less than a decade 24 million fewer people would have…
The Congressional Budget Office on Monday dropped its highly-anticipated analysis of the House Republicans' healthcare plan, arming all sides with results that can back up their favorite talking points on healthcare. The CBO report, on the one hand, says that millions more people will be uninsured…
A budget estimate of the House GOP's health bill has found that millions of Americans insured through Obamacare's exchanges would opt out of purchasing coverage once the federal government stops penalizing them for doing so.
Iowa representative Steve King is receiving a torrent of criticism right now for tweeting, in support of controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders, "Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies."
Newspapers aren't just throwing Trumpoplectic fits, they're monetizing them. The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times have all rolled out clothing lines tweaking the new president. The most comic is found at the Post website, which features a T-shirt in rock-concert black…
In the early 2000s, a widow named Sandy Meadows was demoted from her job in a supermarket floral department because of a Louisiana requirement that she possess a state florist's license. In 2001, Abigail Burroughs, a young woman with cancer, died after repeatedly requesting—and being denied—the…
The New York Times Magazine's Charles Homans has an in-depth look at the rapid evolution of Democratic resistance to the Trump administration.
From the Foundation for Constitutional Government:
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Last week, at the Geneva International Motor Show, Ferrari debuted its newest model, the "812 Superfast." The Superfast revives an old Ferrari name from the 60's, when the Ferrari "America" was updated to the "Superamerica," and then to the "Superfast." The new Superfast will not, contrary to a lot…
As tension continues to mount on Capitol Hill, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned several Congressional leaders on Wednesday that America would face the debt ceiling this week.
Not much over the past couple of days has made the passage of the American Health Care Act seem more likely. One of the House bill’s chief Republican critics, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, told ABC's George Stephanopoulos Sunday that the proposal "as it's written today…cannot pass the Senate."
There's a race going on for states to file or join new lawsuits against President Trump's second executive order temporarily halting entry into the U.S. for some people from a few terror-plagued countries. The new actions promise to be rehashes of the states' earlier suits against Trump's original…
Editor in Chief Stephen F. Hayes joins Byron York and Hugo Gurdon of the Washington Examiner on The Right Question to discuss the messy roll out of the GOP's Obamacare repeal.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Michael Warren and Chris Deaton join host Eric Felten to talk about the unsteady rollout of the GOP's plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. And John McCormack comes by to tell us about the tension between the White House and Capitol Hill over the…
Who would have imagined that it would come to this? Leftish activists are campaigning to have the Confederate flag removed from statehouses, statues of southern statesmen removed from campuses and public spaces, and the names of campus buildings changed to remove any they deem racist. These very…
Fifty is only half as good as one hundred, but it's twice as good as twenty-five. That's how anyone who is anyone in the international oil business saw it earlier this week when they gathered in Houston for the annual CERAWeek conference sponsored by HIS Markit, the data and information firm. They…
Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, where what happens on the podcast stays on the podcast as Bill talks about how he likes to spend time in Vegas. Speaking of gambling, the GOP is taking a big—and completely unnecessary—gamble by rushing a big, comprehensive Obamacare…
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Politicians' children are supposed to be off limits to reporters, per the rules of what we used to call "common decency." (It was a thing, I'm told.) The agreement holds because it's a shared standard of upright social practice and interpersonal ethics that helps the world run smoothly. And because…
Top Democratic lawmakers are praising a controversial diplomat who served as a key Middle East figure in the Obama administration, after reports that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis asked her to fill a top policy slot at the Pentagon.
After going 3-0 in the first round of the World Baseball Classic, Israel moves on to the second round of pool play this weekend in Tokyo when it squares off against international powerhouse Cuba Saturday (10 p.m. EST). The other two teams in Pool E are the Netherlands, whom Israel defeated…
March 10, 2017 marks the 20th anniversary of the iconic television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On this occasion, we look back on how THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Jonathan V. Last acknowledged the final episode of the ground-breaking program:
Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with deputy online editor Chris Deaton about the GOP's troubled Obamacare repeal and replace efforts.
The stock market is through the roof. Consumer confidence is at a 15-year high. And this morning, in the first full monthly jobs report from the Labor Department, comes news that the country added 235,000 jobs in February. That pace is about the same as it was the month before and about double the…
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The White House continues to argue that the House Republican health-care bill is the best and only way to repeal Obamacare. "No matter where you are, especially on the conservative side, you cannot possibly believe that the current health care system is an effective program," said press secretary…
Of the 51 Tucker automobiles assembled and ineptly brought to market in 1948, 47 exist today. They’re held in the protective clutches of museums and private collectors. The car that Preston Tucker originally planned to sell for $1,000—dubbed the "Tin Goose" in its prototype stage—can nowadays…
Site of the Yalta Conference, the Crimea is the Miami Beach of the former Soviet Union, a paradise of palm trees, health resorts, and other sybaritic pleasures. You might think this is the reason that Russia recently reconquered the province. But geopolitics and natural resources played a greater…
For roughly two decades, the United States enjoyed a marked decline in its crime rates. Burglaries, murders, other violent crimes—they all fell steadily. That promising age ended as 2014 gave way to 2015. For the past two years, crime has been rising. And alarmingly, it is violent…
A few years ago, an adjunct professor and disability-rights activist named Stacy Nowak went to take a look at a college course offered online by the University of California, Berkeley. The course was called "Journalism for Social Change." Nowak is deaf. She has no connection to UC Berkeley; she…
A bird that lives 500 years before it dies—sometimes by fire, sometimes not—only to be reborn from its ashes and live another 500 years is, today, one of the most widely known mythical creatures. Towns are named after it; its figure adorns coins and publishing logos; and it haunts plays, poems, and…
A machete, a chainsaw, a potter's wheel, jumper cables, and an actual stack of Bibles: Anyone who saw what was sitting on my writer's desk right now would either diagnose paranoia or predict my imminent flight "off the grid." But the avocado-green Dutch oven, the cobalt-blue stemmed-glass dessert…
As noted recently in these pages (“Nullifying Calhoun," Feb. 27), Yale University has decided to remove the name of alumnus John C. Calhoun from the "residential college"—Ivy-speak for "dormitory"—it has graced since the dorm was built in the 1930s. Calhoun, class of 1804, senator, vice president,…
Historically, we’ve had witchcraft, priestcraft, warcraft, and occasionally a spot of statecraft. Today, we have craft beers in corner bars and craft talks at conclaves of writers around the country. Craft is mellowing with age.
In the early 2000s, a widow named Sandy Meadows was demoted from her job in a supermarket floral department because of a Louisiana requirement that she possess a state florist’s license. In 2001, Abigail Burroughs, a young woman with cancer, died after repeatedly requesting—and being denied—the…
Many Americans are astonished by the fact that in July 1945, having won the Second World War in Europe, Winston Churchill was defeated in the general election and had to leave the premiership despite having been so personally popular and militarily successful in that job. Yet that extraordinary…
The ironists among us—or maybe wiseacres would be a better term—have always taken macabre note of the premature deaths of health and fitness gurus. One such was Jim Fixx, author of The Complete Book of Running (1977), who suffered a fatal coronary at the appallingly young age of 52—while jogging,…
Trusting the process makes for good life advice and bad legislating. The morning after congressional Republicans released their Obamacare replacement, dubbed the American Health Care Act, conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham complained it lacked the “Trumpism of the health care reform" the…
"Could Joe Biden have been the next Abraham Lincoln? That thought came to mind recently . . . "
"To put it in a nutshell,” João Carlos Espada tells us, his book "aims at providing an intellectual case for liberal democracy." This aim puts The Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty on a crowded shelf of mostly desiccated husks. What gives his work vitality is his wish to clarify why European…
The superhero movie Logan doesn’t look, sound, or behave like any other superhero movie ever made. It's set around El Paso and the Mexican border town of Juarez, then in Oklahoma, and finally in North Dakota. It's dusty and gritty and mostly rural, entirely unlike the nine world-capital-hopping…
Once it was thought to be a measure of an actor's skill that he or she might play roles at odds with his or her actual circumstances, race, or even gender (Shakespeare's women, after all, were once played by male youths). But the trend—disguised as a moral imperative—has been to demand that…
Kim Jong-un’s decision to take out his half-brother Kim Jong-nam, with the assassins using an internationally banned chemical agent to do it, is not the usual mode of operation for North Korea's first family. While the Kims of Pyongyang have not hesitated to purge hundreds by some of the most…
Who can forget watching in one’s youth the great sitcom Car 54, Where Are You? It aired for just two glorious seasons, from 1961 to 1963, on NBC on Sunday nights from 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. It was a memorable touch of wry reality, sandwiched between the fantasies of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of…
During my teaching days, along with courses on Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Willa Cather, I taught an undergraduate course called Advanced Prose Style. What it was advanced over was never made clear, but each year the course was attended by 15 or so would-be—or, as we should say today,…
I HAVE OFTEN PRAYED that one day an authentic Jersey diner would spring up in Washington, D.C. It’s the only thing missing in a city full of trendy bars and expensive restaurants. When all the clubs close down at 2 A.M. (quite embarrassing when friends from New York visit), there’s nowhere to go.…
On February 27 the Supreme Court turned down an appeal in a case from Colorado that would have decided whether nonprofit organizations that run issue advertisements during election campaigns can be compelled to disclose the names and addresses of their donors. This was one of several cases making…
It’s tough to be a globalist these days. President Trump and his chief strategist denounce you. Alt-right websites ridicule you. The Brexit vote leaves your European plans in limbo.
A debate over the military's budget is emerging between defense hawks on Capitol Hill and fiscal hawks in the Trump administration. The fiscal hawks, chief among them Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, want the next annual defense budget set at $603 billion, a 3 percent…
Non-Californians need not apply. That’s the message the University of California system sent last week, when it proposed to limit out-of-state residents to just 20 percent of student slots at its flagship schools. At UC campuses with higher rates of out-of-state students—at Berkeley, for example,…
House speaker Paul Ryan got himself into trouble Thursday for broadly describing why the GOP considers the risk-sharing under Obamacare between younger and older consumers a failure, leaving out the details that got reporters questioning his understanding of insurance.
President Donald Trump's pick for Israel envoy passed the Senate committee stage with full Republican support Thursday, despite lingering doubts from some Democrats on the panel.
Health care legislation proposed by Republicans to replace Obamacare has received a barrage of criticism from outside conservative groups, as well as a number of prominent members of Republicans' own caucus, such as Sen. Mike Lee. Many have speculated that the current bill is dead on arrival.
Bill Bishop is one of my favorite sociologists. (He's not a real sociologist, mind you. He's a journalist. But he co-wrote one of my favorite sociology books, The Big Sort. If you haven't read it, run, don't walk.)
On this week’s episode, the Substandard takes on Logan and the X-Men series. What does Sonny really think about parents who take their kids to R-rated movies? Plus JVL has a special surprise in store for Vic! All on this week's Substandard!
Driven by a class discussion to scratch at her face with the pointy end of a protest pin, a University of Michigan student played off her awkwardly conspicuous injury as a politically-motivated mauling by a strange man in downtown Ann Arbor.
In the early pre-dawn hours the House Ways and Means Committee passed a key portion of the Republican health bill clearing the way for an eventual full vote on the House floor.
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The Washington Post Magazine's cover story this week is about … the horrors of home-schooling. Specifically, the horrors of "fundamentalist Christian" home-schooling. The cover illustration for the story depicts a sinister windowless log cabin that's supposed to be your typical home school, I guess.
By now, I suspect you've heard about what happened when Charles Murray went to Vermont to give a lecture at Middlebury College. But perhaps you have not seen it. The video is here. It is instructive.
President Trump met with a select group of leaders from conservative organizations Wednesday evening to discuss the health-care bill. Represented at the meeting were the Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation (and its political arm, Heritage Action), Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and…
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with reporter Alice B. Lloyd on the aimless "a day without a woman" protest.
President Trump can go both ways. On February 24, he delivered a wild-and-woolly speech brimming with populist anger to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Four days later, he addressed a joint session of Congress in statesmanlike fashion and called for national unity and bipartisanship.
The U.S. government is preserving all options for dealing with an increasingly belligerent North Korea, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said Wednesday.
Congressional members and staffers generally act like their fellow Americans sit around waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to release scoring of major legislative proposals, much like they await the release of March Madness brackets. The truth is that most Americans hardly care what the…
For nearly six years now, a federal mandate has manhandled American colleges. The Department of Education's 2011 guidance on campus sexual misconduct reinterpreted a gender parity law—Title IX of the Higher Education Act—to police colleges' responses to reported sexual assaults. In so doing, the…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Christopher Caldwell has a piece in First Things about "American carnage,"—the opioid crisis.
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Joseph. W. Rogers, the founder of Waffle House, has died at 97. In 2014, Geoffrey Norman paid tribute to the famous restaurant chain in these pages. We reproduce his piece below:
In a deeply divided America, infrastructure investment appears to be a rare area of political consensus. Donald Trump called for a major road-and-bridge program in his victory speech. Even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi—opposed to nearly everything else for which Trump stands—has promised to…
A new one-man play about one man's spiritual pilgrimage, C.S. Lewis on Stage: The Most Reluctant Convert, opens with a riff against a cruel, indifferent, and seemingly meaningless universe reminiscent of a Woody Allen monologue. "And what is 'life'?" the protagonist asks in defending his youthful…
Ladies who don't like the president, and who can afford to skip a day of work—"paid or unpaid labor," according to the organizers of January 21st's Women's March—aren't showing up on Wednesday. It's in alignment with a global labor strike, but the domestic "Day Without A Woman" is more closely a…
The House Republican health care bill has an odd problem: Nobody seems to support it. Nobody, that is, except President Trump and his administration. While the House plan appears to be the work of Speaker Paul Ryan and the two committee chairmen of Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce, the White…
Villanova University in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania, is a Roman Catholic institution. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But for some residents of Radnor, Villanova is kind of overdoing this whole Catholic thing.
Amid unsparing challenges from conservative critics and policy wonks, Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday that the House GOP's new health care legislation is "the bill" to begin undoing and supplanting Obamacare, and has the White House's backing.
Civic dissatisfaction is a widespread, bipartisan phenomenon these days. Polls regularly find that a large percentage of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and confidence in public institutions remains anemic.
Founded in 1947, the Hudson Review is one of America's most esteemed literary journals. Three young men started the magazine, William Arrowsmith, a poet and translator, Joseph Bennett, and Frederick Morgan, a poet and the longtime editor of the Hudson Review, from 1948-1998, when he was succeeded…
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House Republicans revealed draft legislation Monday evening designed to allay conservative lawmakers without spooking moderates, reassure wary voters, and not alienate Democrats too much.
Dozens of professors at Middlebury College in Vermont are defending free, civil discourse after protests against a conservative author slated to speak there last week spiraled out of control.
On Wednesday, March 1, the Boston Symphony Orchestra appeared at Carnegie Hall under conductor Andris Nelsons with pianist Emanuel Ax in what may have been the most remarkable performance of the season.
It's hard to say what's worse: the outrageousness of the Southern Poverty Law Center in pinning the label "white nationalist" and "extremist" on anyone who bucks the prevailing politically correct narrative, or the credulity of the mainstream media in treating the SPLC as a neutral source.
The Trump administration has a problem with anonymous sources and the media outlets who run stories based entirely on them. This, in the White House’s view, is how unfair and untrue narratives about the Trump campaign's nefarious connections with Russia persist. "People start taking things as fact…
House Republicans on Monday released their long-awaited healthcare bill, but the plan would only repeal major parts of Obamacare starting in 2020 — when the political world will be engulfed in the next presidential election.
Donald Trump might turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the environmental movement. As Winston Churchill replied when his wife suggested his party's loss might turn out to be just such a blessing in disguise, "At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised."
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes on President Trump's wiretapping claims.
Later this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee convenes hearings on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Although the Committee will have a lot of legitimate issues to consider, some outsiders are trying to interest it in two unusual topics: natural…
If there's a president of the United States who likes the press, he has not yet been elected. Of course, in modern times, there have been presidents who charmed certain columnists and correspondents (John F. Kennedy) or liked to banter with the White House press corps (Franklin D. Roosevelt). But…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD's editor at large Bill Kristol joined C-SPAN's Washington Journal Monday morning to discuss President Donald Trump's claim that his Oval Office predecessor ordered a wiretap of him as a candidate, as well as a special editorial the magazine published in response.
President Trump signed a new executive order on Monday to replace a previous order that restricted travel into the United States from several foreign countries. The new order maintains the restriction from six of the seven countries in the original one—Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and…
President Trump's first full month in office coincided with Black History Month. And on the face of it, February was a predictably Trumpian mess: His administration not only blundered from its February 1st listening session to last week's awkward statements and bungled photo-ops. What began with…
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An appearance by American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray at Middlebury College was violently disrupted last week, as Jenna Lifhits reported in these pages. Now, Murray has recounted his experience:
It's the weirdest feeding frenzy of the week that doesn't include the words "Sergey Kislyak." It's Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's twice-a-week workout.
So far, as president, Donald Trump has said all the right things about space. He wants NASA focused on exploration again. He wants men flying back to the moon in 2018. In his pseudo-State of the Union last week, he reminded the country that "American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a…
So what happened this weekend? For a full briefing on President Trump's claim that President Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during the election—what was alleged, what the president knew when he alleged it, and what to make of the various responses to those allegations—read editor in chief…
It's not a good idea, but it's not a crisis either, when the sitting president of the United States invents claims of massive voter fraud or misstates crime rates or does many of the other things Donald Trump has done. It is an institutional and perhaps constitutional crisis when the president of…
I spent most of the last two days reporting out the extraordinary allegations President Donald Trump made against his predecessor, Barack Obama – that Obama had Trump's "wires tapped in Trump Tower." And I've spent many hours over the past several weeks looking into claims about ties between…
The violent mob protest that greeted Charles Murray's appearance at Middlebury College on March 2 grew out of several days of agitation.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Michael Warren joins host Eric Felten to talk about the Trump administration's eventful week, from the high of the president's speech before Congress to the low of the Attorney General's Russia recusal. Then Chris Deaton comes by to tell us about the…
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There is only one way President Trump can square a circle, a circle in which he will meet himself coming around as he tries to deliver on his promises. Call it the 3-1/2-percent solution. No, not a cocaine shot half as potent as the 7-percent solution self-administered by the world's most famous…
With the confirmation of four more of President Trump's secretary-level appointments this week, the new administration is close to filling all 15 openings that technically comprise the "cabinet". Only two departments, Agriculture and Labor, still have vacancies.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with Ethan Epstein and Larry O'Connor discussing whether Trump's reputation as a deal maker is paying off for the GOP.
Say this about the Trump presidency: It befuddles Democrats, who are racing to adjust their political positions to appease their angry constituents' anti-Trump mood. Their latest contortion on immigration is leaving some in the party of resistance sounding like Rush Limbaugh.
Amid Thursday’s over-hyped brouhaha about Jeff Sessions meeting with the Russian ambassador, a curious detail emerged. In Sessions's recusal memo, it was explained who at the Justice Department would be handling any investigations into the Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia. "Consistent with…
According to Rod Dreher, Western culture is irretrievably lost. No amount of politicking or resistance-as-usual can turn back the tide of intellectual currents that began with the death of metaphysical realism in the 14th century, the idea that "the essence of a thing is built into its existence by…
Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
Donald Trump is undeniably a skilled salesman—his powers of persuasion are a big part of how he got to the White House. Yet despite being a bestselling author himself, the president is not much of a bookseller. Friday morning, the writer Nick Adams received what you might expect to be pretty much…
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The math isn't complicated. If the federal government doesn't reform entitlements soon, the country will face a debt crisis. There is no disputing this. It's inevitable. The only unknown is timing. And the stubborn determination of some leaders in both political parties to ignore runaway…
WEEKLY STANDARD editor at large William Kristol joined a panel featuring F.H. Buckley, Rich Lowry, James Pierson, Peter Thiel, and Roger Kimball to discuss the current political moment. The conversation, convened by the Manhattan Institute, examined the following:
Stockholm
What's the sound a bottle of soda makes when opened? If you're the government in Berkeley or Philadelphia, it's not ssfzzzt but cha-ching. These two towns—bedrocks of meddlesome nanny-state liberalism—now collect steep taxes on soft drinks and other sweetened beverages. The Philly soda-tariff took…
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has promised to recuse himself from any Justice Department investigations into the Trump presidential campaign. His blanket recusal likely will not satisfy his most ardent opponents, who wanted to see the Alabama Republican resign after it was revealed Sessions had…
President Trump can go both ways. On February 24, he delivered a wild-and-woolly speech brimming with populist anger to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Four days later, he addressed a joint session of Congress in statesmanlike fashion and called for national unity and bipartisanship.
Donald Trump might turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the environmental movement. As Winston Churchill replied when his wife suggested his party’s loss might turn out to be just such a blessing in disguise, "At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised."
Civic dissatisfaction is a widespread, bipartisan phenomenon these days. Polls regularly find that a large percentage of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and confidence in public institutions remains anemic.
For nearly six years now, a federal mandate has manhandled American colleges. The Department of Education’s 2011 guidance on campus sexual misconduct reinterpreted a gender parity law—Title IX of the Higher Education Act—to police colleges' responses to reported sexual assaults. In so doing, the…
Near the end of World War I, there was an alleged (almost surely apocryphal) exchange of telegrams between German and Austrian officers whose units were fighting side by side, in difficult circumstances, against the Allies. The German cabled: “Our situation is serious, but not critical." The…
SeaWorld is drowning—in red ink. "As they reported continued declines in revenue and attendance," the Orlando Sentinel writes, "SeaWorld Entertainment executives vowed to push for improved financial performance through a combination of new attractions, cost cuts and pricing strategies."
What’s the sound a bottle of soda makes when opened? If you're the government in Berkeley or Philadelphia, it's not ssfzzzt but cha-ching. These two towns—bedrocks of meddlesome nanny-state liberalism—now collect steep taxes on soft drinks and other sweetened beverages. The Philly soda-tariff took…
Thomas Hardy died in 1928 and immediately precipitated a most tangled crisis, namely, how and where to inter him. Hardy’s will specified that he wished to be buried in Stinsford churchyard in his native Dorset; but influential London literary friends pushed for a public ceremony and burial in the…
According to Rod Dreher, Western culture is irretrievably lost. No amount of politicking or resistance-as-usual can turn back the tide of intellectual currents that began with the death of metaphysical realism in the 14th century, the idea that “the essence of a thing is built into its existence by…
Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric—a guidebook of rhetorical devices—was an unexpected success in 2010. David R. Godine, the noted Boston publisher, had planned a print run of 4,000 copies, but sales shot to over 20,000 following glowing reviews in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. Ward…
Up on the third floor, in a bookcase against the south wall—the second shelf from the bottom, maybe two-thirds of the way along—there's an aging copy of The Art of Memory, written by the British historian Frances Yates back in the 1960s.
Well, of course Moonlight won the Academy Award. Who’s kidding whom in the year following the dreadful scandal known as #OscarsSoWhite? Sure, it looked like La La Land had it sewn up, so much so that no one batted an eye when it was mistakenly awarded Best Picture for two minutes at the…
THE NEW YORK TIMES’S FAIRY TALE SLURS INVOLVING PEOPLE’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION are strictly off-limits at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. So THE SCRAPBOOK wants it clearly understood that nothing pejorative is intended by the headline on this item. Perish the thought. The phrase "fairy tale" refers, instead, to…
Villanova University in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania, is a Roman Catholic institution. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! But for some residents of Radnor, Villanova is kind of overdoing this whole Catholic thing.
In 1970, in a review of Kenneth Clark’s Civilization, John Russell, art critic of the New York Times, grandly prophesied that "the civilization that Clark describes is one which has had its day and will not be seen again." In acknowledging the learned brio with which Clark came to the defense of…
If there’s a president of the United States who likes the press, he has not yet been elected. Of course, in modern times, there have been presidents who charmed certain columnists and correspondents (John F. Kennedy) or liked to banter with the White House press corps (Franklin D. Roosevelt). But…
The craft beer market continues to surge, and this being America, that means a burgeoning market for litigation. Among the lawsuits that have been brewing is a case filed last month accusing Walmart of peddling as “craft" beer the product of an industrial-scale brewer. Now comes another…
Tucked away somewhere in my dusty science writer’s memorabilia is a postcard I received in the early 1980s. On the front side is a picture of "Lucy"—hundreds of fossilized bones arrayed as the skeleton of a small primitive human ancestor. Lucy's remains were unearthed in Ethiopia's Afar region in…
With his latest book, Bing West has reconfirmed his standing as one of the most intrepid and insightful observers of America’s wars over the past decade-and-a-half. Some have called him a latter-day Ernie Pyle. Embedded for the sixth time with soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, West…
Gary Cohn isn’t the oldest of President Donald Trump's senior White House aides, or the most experienced, at least when it comes to government. Indeed, unlike Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, and Kellyanne Conway, Cohn has no experience in politics to speak of. He's not even a Republican!
The math isn’t complicated. If the federal government doesn't reform entitlements soon, the country will face a debt crisis. There is no disputing this. It's inevitable. The only unknown is timing. And the stubborn determination of some leaders in both political parties to ignore runaway…
In 2007 and 2008 Senator Barack Obama campaigned against the Bush administration’s use of executive power. But for the next eight years President Obama wielded unilateral power energetically: through his administrative agencies and from his own office—via his "pen" and "phone," as he famously put…
After years of campaigning on the need to repeal and replace Obamacare, Republicans in Congress are in disarray about what to do now that voters have empowered them to do just that. In his address to Congress on February 28, President Donald Trump helpfully exercised some leadership by letting…
Stockholm
Say this about the Trump presidency: It befuddles Democrats, who are racing to adjust their political positions to appease their angry constituents’ anti-Trump mood. Their latest contortion on immigration is leaving some in the party of resistance sounding like Rush Limbaugh.
As Donald Trump tries to transform himself from reality TV star and King of Twitter into something more substantive and presidential, his principal argument is that he’s fulfilling his campaign promises. For several weeks now, the White House has been boasting that he is "already achieving results…
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on why Trump isn't the first president to have Russia problems.
Slam or spoken word poetry, and its sometimes extemporaneous hip-hop-style recitation, is a trendy way to prove to students that a poem has a life beyond the page. But one teacher and her middle school English class in Madison, Wisconsin have taken the curriculum in an R-rated direction.
Who could be against a rule that requires investment advisers to act in the best interests of their retiree-clients? Donald Trump, the Washington branch of the Goldman Sachs alumni association, the Wall Street Journal, and well-intentioned policy wonks who have never met a regulation they like,…
President Donald Trump's pick for ambassador to Israel is likely to gain the support of a Democratic senator on the Foreign Relations Committee, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has confirmed.
There are many claimants to the honor of having nudged Donald Trump over the top in the presidential election. But the folks with the best case are the National Rifle Association and the consultants who made their TV ads.
It has been a tumultuous start for President Donald Trump's National Security Council, to put it gently. General Michael Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser less than a month into the new administration, amid controversy over his contacts with a Russian ambassador. It is clear…
A top Democratic senator who previously met with the Russian ambassador is on the defensive after asserting Thursday that she had never done so.
It's Gamblers Unanimous on this week's episode: Jonathan and Vic play craps on the high seas while Sonny brings down the house playing poker. Plus the Substandard lists their favorite gambling movies (who doesn't love Teddy KGB?) and bid a sad farewell to Bill Paxton.
Lou Reed would have been 75 years old today. On the occasion of his death in October 2013, THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Lee Smith wrote a rememberance. We reproduce it below:
Moments after the president's address to Congress concluded on Tuesday night, Vox ran the following headline: "The president is serious about dismantling the FDA to usher in more medical 'miracles.' That's wrong."
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Sixty-five million dollars is a lot of money for a book that Barack Obama said he would have written anyway—a labor of love, and part of a narrative to "train the next generation." He has a lot to say, a "writerly sensibility" primed to be set loose on the page. And, helpfully, the (so far)…
I'm fascinated by the evolving taxonomy of conservatives in the age of Trump.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
A special prosecutor must be appointed if incriminating evidence emerges about alleged contacts between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, a top Republican senator said Wednesday.
Foreign policy, Walter Lippmann wrote, entails "bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation's commitments and the nation's power." If a statesman fails to balance ends and means, he added, "he will follow a course that leads to disaster."
Some heretofore-skeptical commentators are declaring that February 28 is the date Donald Trump truly became president of the United States. That might signal some good news, but it was closely followed by bad: March 1 could go down as the date of death of the Tea Party movement in America.
Montana representative Ryan Zinke is now set to become President Donald Trump's Interior secretary, after the Senate approved him in a bipartisan, though not overwhelming vote on Wednesday.
Secret intelligence captured during the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's compound and withheld from the public by the Obama administration must be released, the House intelligence chairman told THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Early morning on February 17, word was getting around that Michael Novak had passed away in his sleep, and email klatsches were forming. In mine, one of his close friends wrote that "the generosity of Michael's friendship allowed him to obscure the fact that he was among the few truly great men…
President Donald Trump touched on some encouraging foreign policy points in his joint address to Congress Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. But the speech's optimistic tone was soured by preexisting concerns about Trump's ties to Russia and the administration's potential…
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Rosie O'Donnell, the president's longtime enemy, might like to lead a coup. The former comedienne and conspiracy theorist headlined a resistance rally behind the White House on a rainy Tuesday evening, to protest President Trump's address to the Joint Session of Congress.
Former Democratic governor Steve Beshear sat inside a Kentucky diner and drawled a picture of Obamacare's benefits to his state on Tuesday night. Meanwhile, minority congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer attacked President Donald Trump for being a corporate sellout despite his…
What happened to Common Core—that is, abolishing it? President Trump's promise to get rid of the controversial program of standards for elementary and secondary schools is gone from his speeches.
The era of big government is back. That was the clear message from President Donald Trump's first address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. His speech, as light on specifics as the White House promised, was nonetheless a call for a muscular response from government to the nation's…
A lot can be said about President Trump's speech Tuesday night, in terms of content and rhetoric. There's certainly much to be said about policy—Will Trump endorsing tax credits have an effect on Congress's Obamacare plans? Will Republicans come around to actually endorsing paid family leave?—but…
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes on Trump's address to a joint session of Congress, where the president laid out his "big-government republican" message.