August 2018

The piece you’ve read a hundred times before: Saying goodbye at the dorm-room door—and then writing about it.

Fred Baumann remembers the Kenyon College professor who wrote the book on moderation.

With Bloomberg denying, could it be someone within the West Wing?

Jay Powell continues to show his independence from Donald Trump.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Also: A gentler William Logan, Hemingway’s destructive infatuation, and more.

The Education department issues a draft of rules to replace Obama’s “Dear Colleague” letters on sexual assault.

Beijing's crimes should elicit world condemnation.

On the topic of studies and premature deaths, a new report from the British medical journal the Lancet says that no amount of alcohol is safe for your overall health. Worldwide, alcohol increases the risk of premature death for both men and women and is responsible for a full tenth of all deaths.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the socialist neophyte who won a New York Democratic congressional primary in June, is young and attractive and has a compelling personal story. She likes to remind the public of her working-class roots, and rightly so. “The restaurant I used to work at is closing its…

Hearings on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh are set to begin in early September, so expect several rounds of breathless revelations about the man’s past. Consider an AP story this week headlined “At Yale, Kavanaugh Stayed Out of Debates at a Time of Many.” The story’s lead: “It was the 1980s…

Great news for lovers of cardboard animals. Boxes of Nabisco animal crackers will no longer feature images of cartoon animals in circus cages. Beginning this week, the animals will appear roaming free: The zebra, elephant, lion, giraffe, and gorilla have escaped their cages and are enjoying…

In the runup to the passage of last year’s tax reform bill, readers may recall, former Treasury secretary Larry Summers predicted that 10,000 people would die every year as a direct result of the bill’s passage. He had in mind the bill’s provision repealing the individual insurance mandate…

Anyone inclined to believe that social media have hardened our public discourse will have found ample evidence last week, when John McCain died.

The deeper issue in the Kavanaugh confirmation fight

Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein made one of the worst decisions of the Trump administration when he named Robert Mueller “special counsel” to oversee the investigation of collusion between Donald Trump and Russia in the 2016 election.

Under Pompeo, the State Department is getting its swagger back

Robin Leach, 1941-2018.

Scott Walker is, once again, in a very tight race for reelection in Wisconsin.

Especially those who live in districts full of civilian federal employees.

Plus, the best inning of the season?

The Francis pontificate has always emphasized the importance of mercy. How will that come into play in the sex abuse scandal?

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

The personalized presidency and the degradation of constitutional norms.

Also: My Ántonia at 100, the evolution of logos, and more.

Jan Brewer would be an interesting choice for the Arizona Senate seat.

If all this blustering is a preface of a policy reversal, it can’t come sooner.

In reality, Andrew Cuomo is.

Entrepreneurs are leveraging technology, including smartphone apps, to accomplish what bureaucracies are incapable of achieving alone.

The corruption case is about more than campaign finance laws and tequila shots.

The word is losing all meaning at this point.

The depressing reality behind Cardinal Cupich's comments that the pope has "got to get on with other things."

Tony Evers also says the Democrats need pro-life voters in the party.

Google users get one step ahead of Congress in renaming a building for the late senator.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Also: Louis C. K. returns to stand-up, the late style of John Coltrane, and more.

The establishment-backed former fighter pilot beat out two candidates who courted the lunatic fringe in Arizona's Senate primary.

Barton Swaim, Luddite 2.0

Trump’s fabrications notwithstanding, voter fraud is a thing.

Our country's, and the world's best days were always ahead ofus.

Alice B. Lloyd reviews Abdi Iftin’s memoir presenting a case for the green card lottery.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Also: Our Myers-Briggs obsession, the problem with skim reading, and more.

The changing of the guard continues in the league's best conference, but Drew Brees and the Saints may have one last run left. Plus: More generous catch rules in 2018, but not as generous as the "rules" for cosmic travel in sci-fi.

The president threatened to leave Canada behind in renegotiating NAFTA. But lawmakers doubt he’s allowed to do that.

Hardly an overhaul, but it could have been much worse.

Just like the Founders, McCain blended the concept of honor with the understanding of public virtue.

The Turkish president's thuggish autocracy and reflexive anti-Americanism make him very popular in his country.

The Obama policy of engagement failed. Bring back the stick.

A letter to Senate Judiciary Committee members Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein stands in contrast to a similar letter from Yale law students.

For students and society, the answer is a resounding "yes!"

The former Arizona senator remembers how McCain served not just his country but his state

Plus, a Detroit-style Coney Island pizza?

Donald Trump just couldn’t help it.

The late senator rejects tribalism and reminds Americans that 'we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement.'

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Also: A 101-year-old novelist, China’s $180-million telescope, and more.

A year after President Trump announced his Afghan policy, the Taliban are closer to victory than we are.

If the goal is to postpone the Supreme Court nominee's hearings, any argument will do.

"Nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.”

Dominic Green on putting the saxophonist’s classic quartet’s ‘lost album’ in its context.

Eric Gibson on Delacroix—we know him for his paintings, but he transformed modern drawing as well.

Tom Perrotta on how family and hard work have made Frances Tiafoe a rising tennis star to watch.

Cathy Young on looking at the passion and cruelty of the classic novel with contemporary eyes.

How the late senator was like Henry Clay.

The late senator was the kind of man the Founders had in mind.

The Fed chairman stands up to President Trump at Jackson Hole.

Also: David Pryce-Jones remembers V. S. Naipaul, and more.

It's quite possible.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Ben Schreckinger of Politico joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss the Mueller investigation, the various probes into President Trump's business and charitable operations, and whether or not Jeff Sessions will keep his job.

It’s not perfection, but the pursuit of it.

After Manafort and Cohen, the Democrats are struggling not to overreach.

The president observed a "double standard" in the treatment of Hillary Clinton and the former NSA contractor, who was sentenced to 63 months on Thursday for leaking top-secret information.

Louis Farrakhan isn’t the only radical lurking in the background of the No. 2 official in the DNC.

The primary election victory for Wyoming’s Mark Gordon on August 21 was widely interpreted as a defeat for Donald Trump. And it was—just not in the sense the pundits thought.

John Podhoretz on overlooking the identity-politics marketing to just enjoy the movie’s old-school fun.

Only .03 percent of the electorate needed to be persuaded.

I’m not dropping a heavy hint to book publishers when I say I’ve been daydreaming this week about what it would be like to ghostwrite Michael Cohen’s inevitable memoir, set to appear—I’m guessing—in the fall of 2020.

The death of Sir Vidia Naipaul on August 11 will generate plenty of retrospective monographs and essays, most of them rightly laudatory, some of them less so. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, the descendant of Indian immigrants. In his teens he won a government scholarship to study abroad, and he…

The Scrapbook picks on the New York Times quite a lot. Maybe too much. But it’s hard not to. We so often find fatuous and preposterous material that we simply cannot help passing it along to our readers. One such item appeared in the August 16 edition of the paper—or so we thought. Headlined…

The young poets who stand out have helped make race and sexuality and gender the red-hot centers of current poetry, and they push past as many boundaries as they can. They strain to think anew about selfhood and group membership. Drawing on eclectic traditions, they mine the complexity latent in…

The Scrapbook spent its August break last week tuning out the news and turning to a pile of books we’ve been meaning to read—from the old (Charles Portis’s The Dog of the South and Gringos, which we enthusiastically and unreservedly recommend) to the new, our friend Irwin Stelzer’s fascinating peek…

The French have made lots of important contributions to America. No one denies this. The Statue of Liberty. Lafayette. Tony Parker. French fries—though these were possibly ripped off from Belgium.

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee is no longer Senator Bipartisan.

Hush money and campaign-finance law.

Kofi Annan, 1938-2018.

Chairman of AMI, which publishes the National Enquirer, is cooperating with the feds against Michael Cohen.

Ned Lamont has lost a few times before. Will he lose again to Bob Stefanowski?

Not everything is about sex.

Congressional Republicans react to President Trump's suggestion that cooperating with prosecutors "almost ought to be illegal."

Trump's defense of Manafort betrays his campaign's promise to crack down on lobbyists.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

No.

Also: Catullus’s epic, Christina Dalcher’s 'Vox,' and more.

In this JVLess episode, Sonny and Vic discuss Crazy Rich Asians at the box office. Sonny does an Oreo pairing and Vic tries to put the fix on his blood test. As a special treat to listeners, the second half is a clip show—enjoy and see you after Labor Day!

Almost two years ago, the American Presbyterian minister Andrew Brunson was taken hostage by the Turkish government. The charges against him—“political or military espionage” and “support for a terrorist group”—are absurd. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants the Islamic cleric Fethullah…

The Republican Party will have to answer for Trump, Manafort, and Cohen.

While we were all occupied with Manafort and Cohen, the pollsters were in the field .

Catholics believe in things seen and unseen. And what they see today from the bishops is horrific.

Some are dumb, and some are dangerous. Welcome to the Internet: a song of fire and ice buckets.

Trump's former personal attorney has set up a GoFundMe to pay his legal fees.

It’s what happens when loyalty—to a party or president—trumps everything else.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

With Cohen and Manafort going to jail, the president could choose to burn the system down.

His district is just that red.

Also: Revisiting the life and work of Paul Horgan, and more.

There’s a reason U.S. presidents don’t normally have fixers.

Will the last country to recognize the country turn out the lights?

But the temperamental Trumpists are losing to the Trump-loving establishment in 2018.

Trump’s most prominent evangelical supporter displays an incredible mix of historical ignorance mixed with moral vacuity.

With the Cohen-Manafort one-two punch, Trump’s choices come back to haunt him in a big way.

The president's former fixer said illegal payment to Stormy Daniels was 'for the principal purpose of influencing the election.'

Trump's former campaign adviser found guilty of tax fraud, bank fraud, and conspiring to hide foreign bank accounts.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

The Catholic League president is doing more to discredit the Catholic church than perhaps anyone else.

Also: A lesson from Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, in defense of nationalism, and more.

What does the kooky libertarian see in the authoritarian Putin regime?

The Wisconsin Republican and tariff skeptic will meet with the White House trade adviser on Tuesday, while congressional efforts to reclaim trade authority continue to stall.

Will the Texans finally get healthy and become favorites? Plus: "Packing" the court, and packing as much action into an episode of "24" as creatively possible.

Arizona Republican Jeff Flake returned to the Senate from his three-week trip to Zimbabwe and Botswana on Monday night. The retiring senator had gone to Zimbabwe to serve as an official observer in the country’s presidential election held in late July, but he raised eyebrows back in D.C. when…

California lawmakers want you to know how much they care.

Is it so crazy to think he could actually run in 2020?

Staving off demographic decline will require more than supreme court precedent or policy cocktails of carrots and sticks.

Alice B. Lloyd on the politically loaded sci-fi thriller ‘Vox’—which wants very much to be ‘The Handmaid’s Tale 2.0.’

Asia Argento and the Dangers of MeToo Hypocrisy

Three examples of what not to do.

Plus, the phone booth baby finds his mom.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Also: David Jones’s politics, in praise of Tumblr, and more.

It's not clear that even she knows.

He was actually associate deputy attorney general until recently.

Rudy Giuliani's instant meme is even worse than it looked at first.

The leading Democrat has somehow escaped real scrutiny.

The senator's Accountable Capitalism Act is economically questionable, and the latest example of a policy platform that amounts to a host of strictures, regulations, and oversights by the state.

Trump says that Robert Mueller makes Joe McCarthy look like a baby. But was McCarthyism really a "rigged witch hunt"?

It’s been a while since a New York Times story has spun up Donald Trump enough to prompt an angry tweet storm. On Saturday, the Times published a lengthy report on the cooperation of White House counsel Don McGahn with Robert Mueller’s office of the special counsel. The paper reported that over the…

"Conspiracies baked in half-truths tend to balloon like bread dough"—Charlie LeDuff.

A town in decline faces another blow.

Part 2 in an ongoing, informal, math-y series

Michael M. Rosen reviews Michael Best’s ‘How Growth Really Happens’ and asks what we can learn from past economic booms.

Hal Koss on the evanescent charms of Chicago’s packaged-for-Instagram “Happy Place” pop-up.

Alan Jacobs reviews Edward Tenner’s ‘The Efficiency Paradox.’

Cathy Young remembers the late Russian dissident whose mockery of communism earned him exile.

Amy Henderson reviews the new novel by the author of ‘Under the Tuscan Sun.’

If Wuerl keeps his job, then the Catholic Church's "zero tolerance" policy is a sham.

It's Trump's economy against the rest of the world—and as of now, America is winning.

Plus, how the CIA blew its cover in China.

Three senators skipped Judiciary Committee meeting on Thursday, including Ted Cruz.

Also: Watching Nicolas Cage movies for 14 hours straight, and more.

The former CIA director is no hero.

The country appears headed for another nightmare. What’s the U.S. role?

There are steep costs to the Trump administration's decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans, Haitians, and Hondurans—and better ways to address the White House's concerns.

Plus, the man behind KFILE.

The president’s general attacks against the press are at the least obnoxious—and at the most untrue. There is no better way to demonstrate the latter point than to place facts above all else.

The IRS rules on crowdfunding are nebulous, but the onus is on him to prove the donations were 'pure generosity.'

In this latest episode, the Substandard discusses the surprise hit The Meg and looks back on the summer box office—what we got right (a few things) and wrong (a lot). JVL gets called a nerd, Vic explains slot machines to his nephew, and Sonny's dog gets into a sticky situation. Plus Warner Bros. DC…

You know how movie studios cherry-pick quotes from negative reviews to make them sound positive? It's just like that.

Action is in response to the president's many proclamations that the press is the 'enemy of the people.'

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast"—the Queen.

How not to get tricked by noise.

Also: English pop songs by Swedish musicians, a life of Charlotte Lennox, and more.

Jack Phillips faces a new civil-rights complaint for refusing to bake a cake celebrating a gender transition. This time, though, he’s going on the offensive.

Obama officials wanted to shut down for-profit colleges altogether. They almost did.

Congressional Republicans have no opinion whatsoever about Trump's White House nondisclosure agreements.

He isn't stupid, he isn't a white supremacist, and he's not just for young men.

He ran hard early not against Donald Trump, but Paul Ryan. And he might have peaked too soon.

The news that Pope Francis has revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church to designate the death penalty “inadmissible” was greeted in the American media as evidence that the church is at last catching up with the times. That assessment, superficial though many Catholics will consider it, isn’t…

David Skinner’s shiners.

Jim Jordan’s bid to succeed Paul Ryan.

With less than two weeks before Arizona's 2018 primary, one candidate appears to be pulling away from the field for the GOP Senate nomination, according to a new poll. 

Plus, move over Paw Patrol.

Hosted by Jim Swift

Also: Turning your tweets into a book is a terrible idea.

And Omarosa is, once again, the star.

A full update on Tuesday night's primaries

Mistakes were made, wreaths were laid.

Few races for state attorney general receive or merit national attention. In yesterday’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor party primary, however, 5th District Rep. Keith Ellison defeated the endorsed DFL candidate and other contenders to run as the party’s candidate for the job. In addition to his day job…

The trip would likely coincide with the holiday marking the establishment of North Korea.

But if there is …

Mitch McConnell has not forgotten the painful lessons of the Bork nomination.

Farmers are the first to feel the squeeze.

During a briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to comment on questions surrounding the unprecedented use of non-disclosure agreements for senior White House staff, which some employees were asked to sign at President Donald Trump’s behest in order to…

Plus, a nugget catastrophe.

Also, Sean Spicer says "the president was aware of my book"

Hosted by Jim Swift.

Fifteen years ago today the lights went out on 50 million people in the Northeast—making it the largest power outage in US history.

Also: Thomas Sowell’s inconvenient truths, England’s lost king, and more.

Conservatism is the belief in advancing ideas, the alt-right believes in advancing a race.

If the Chinese buy Steinway, we fully expect to see an epic America-First meltdown.

The meeting that launched a thousand controversies.

How the Trump era has inspired women—mostly Democrats—to run for office.

Minnesota, Wisconsin, Connecticut and Vermont vote.

President Donald Trump and his allies have recently touted the existence of nondisclosure agreements with White House employees as a response to estranged former employee Omarosa Manigault Newman’s attacks on Trump.

Can a high-profile former governor and presidential hopeful find happiness as a hardworking energy secretary?

Plus, Angus King's Instagram book.

Who signed them, who are they with, and what about Jared and Ivanka?

No.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen that kind of fist pump.

Also: Remembering V.S. Naipaul, David Horowitz’s prescience, and more.

It's long been suspected that Trump took the unprecedented step of having his White House staff sign NDA's. For the first time, it's now been confirmed.

Senate Dems request thousands of trivial Kavanaugh documents. Nice try.

The league uses patriotism to sell tickets and merch, but Roger Goodell doesn't care at all about the people for whom the national anthem means something.

In an Iowa metal shop, the booming economy is hiding the effects of Trump’s tariffs.

Jeremy Corbyn and the uses of idiocy.

Getting out of the Paris Agreement was just the first step on the road to a realist global energy policy.

Catherine Addington reviews “Heavenly Bodies,” the Met’s exhibition of Godly garments and high couture.

Hannah Yoest on the work of Jon McNaughton, the painter of populist rage.

B.D. McClay on Sheila Heti’s ‘Motherhood’ and taking control by giving it up.

Naomi Schaefer Riley reviews the sequel to Allison Pearson’s ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It.’

New poll shows the Republican challenger is gaining ground.

With the November congressional elections only 87 days away, Donald Trump has added to his revolutionary use of tweets what might prove to be an outdated reliance on two old-fashioned electoral winners to pull Republican candidates through tough elections: a booming economy and promise-keeping.…

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Also: The fight over Kafka, tallboys, and more.

George Conway said Friday morning that former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman’s claims that President Donald Trump used racist phrases when discussing Conway, who is half Filipino, are “ridiculous” and not credible.

Why not deregulate everybody?

Meet the new Marco . . .

When potential clients crossed the threshold into his dark and paneled office not far from the White House, Clark Clifford would give them a little speech. Yes, he told them, he could offer them his “extensive knowledge of how to deal with the government on your problems.” And certainly he could…

A July 27 game between the Houston Astros and the Texas Rangers featured a few minutes of pointless delight. Chris White, a Marine veteran, made the unusual decision to remove his trousers and shirt, brandish his Stars-and-Stripes-themed underwear—silkies is the military term—and sprint across the…

Is The Scrapbook the only one who’s grown weary of the word team used where it doesn’t belong—outside the world of sports? For a year or two after Olympic teams were called Team USA or Team France, it was cute to refer to your company or office as “team” this or that. Then politicians got in on the…

In Europe and North America, museums just can’t win. It takes wealthy people and large corporations to keep them operating, but left-wing artists and intellectuals don’t like wealthy people and large companies.

Election season is upon us, and you know what that means—idiotic trickery dreamed up by campaign hacks and political consultants.

The fact-checking industry has grown tremendously in recent years, and mostly for good reason. Half-truths, outrageous rumors, and outright fabrications are common enough without the Internet. They are ubiquitous online. When fact-checking is well done (by, for instance, Glenn Kessler at the…

"This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics—and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!” So tweeted President Donald Trump on August 5. He was referring to members of his immediate family and his campaign team having met with Russian…

Plus, don't let the kids run social if you're a serious organization.

Taxes pay for public schools. Water still wet.

The Colorado Republican introduced a tough bill in April that's picked up steam since the Helsinki summit.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Also: Visiting Emily Brontë’s moors, and more.

On this latest episode, the Substandard discusses Disney's Christopher Robin. JVL gets the Kenmore of cars (or is it Whirlpool?). Vic heads to the Cape (no, the other one). And Sonny makes a difference on Twitter. Plus lots of dudes chattin'!

Colombia is a functioning republic with a bright future. Venezuela, its neighbor, is a nightmare. What accounts for the difference?

Mean Girls and the political undertow are sweeping civil discourse out to sea.

Jason Kessler, organizer of last year’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, has announced that he will be holding an anniversary rally in Washington, D.C. on August 12. In a recent video, Kessler expressed his intent for this year’s rally to be about white advocacy and white rights—but not…

Plus, make light bulbs great again!

Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) was arrested Wednesday morning on charges of insider trading. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for New York’s Southern District announced that Collins surrendered himself in Manhattan. His son Cameron was also arrested. Their arraignment was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

There's no reason for conservatives to be defending this guy.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Also: The Abolition of Man at 75, and more.

Fresh court filings and expert insight illuminate Paul Manafort’s rug money.

With a slim lead and votes still being counted, Republicans appear to have skirted outright disaster in a too-close-to-call special election held Tuesday to replace a retired House member in Ohio’s 12th congressional district, which has been consistently red for more than three decades.

As goes Trump, so goes the conservative movement.

Priscilla M. Jensen pays a visit to Miss Flannery.

The most recent entries in the film universe went to the blockbuster formula. Amazon has a chance to right the ship.

First they came for the Infowars host. Then they stopped.

I was a little surprised last week to learn that Bill Loud, patriarch of the Southern California family depicted in the first reality-television show (An American Family, PBS, 1973), had died—at the patriarchal age of 97. But of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised: A generation or more has…

Plus, who owns a Twitter account?

Drones are an evolving security threat, from intel gathering to targeting individuals. Is the U.S. prepared?

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Twenty years ago today al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies and killed 224 people. Iran helped them do it.

Also: The euro mistake, in praise of newsletters, and more.

When protectionism means protecting the multinationals.

Running for city council in Washington, D.C. as a Republican gets you some funny looks.

Krauthammer’s research assistants reminisce.

Republicans dismiss the Netroots Nation view of 2020 at their own peril.

In 2016 the College of Charleston ended the practice of considering race and ethnicity in admissions decisions—affirmative action, as it is called. The change went unnoticed in the college community until the Post and Courier, the local daily paper, reported it on July 29. Whereupon, almost within…

Plus, why one vet thinks it's time to retire the Blue Angels. (He's wrong.)

The latest, paying down the national debt, met mixed reception from congressional Republicans (when it wasn't muted altogether).

Two years after First Boy Donald Trump Jr. accepted a meeting with a Russian lawyer in the hopes of getting damaging information about Hillary Clinton, the story is continuing to give the White House headaches. The Washington Post reported this weekend that President Trump was worried Don Jr. might…

Are you Trumpy enough?

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Also: Alan Garner’s English childhood, Joshua Hren’s short stories, and more.

Fool me once…

“What’s happening today is part of a coordinated campaign of pressuring Tehran.”

Few American liberals strike the same balance.

The first of a pair of Paul Manafort trials began this week in a courthouse in Virginia. The international lobbyist and onetime head of the Trump presidential campaign is charged with parking millions in cash offshore to evade taxes and otherwise launder his earnings. These are common enough…

Washington, D.C., in 2018.

The search for a decent writer exposes the editorial board’s unprincipled prejudice.

Understanding Jeremy Corbyn's antisemitism.

Christopher Caldwell on the euro and the damage it wrought.

Danny Heitman on why it is so difficult to see the great polymath and his work clearly

Tim Markatos on the challenges of bringing Joan of Arc’s story to the screen.

James Bowman argues that the lives of 19th-century utopians were more interesting than the utopias they imagined.

Growth trumps decline. That’s what President Trump is gambling on to hand him victory if the trade skirmish morphs into a trade war. The U.S. economy is growing at an annual rate of 4.1 percent and continues to create jobs. According to yesterday’s jobs report, the economy added 157,000 new jobs in…

Plus, fun with roads!

Both parties have had some good polls. Here's how you should digest the results.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes

So crazy it just might work.

Also: Hollywood’s Cold War blacklist, how screens limit learning, and more.

Her days will grow short, when she reaches September.

The hometown briefing.

For President Trump and his foreign policy team, cracking the Islamic Republic is job one.

Democrats have tried to block the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the FBI and its probe of the Trump presidential campaign. They have failed. And the Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating the actions of the FBI on its own.

Washington is full of people who make self-assured pronouncements about what will happen next week or next year. We often caution against this tendency, thinking as we do of presidential candidate John F. Kennedy’s argument to his aides for picking the unscrupulous Lyndon Johnson as his running…

In early July, the Nation magazine published a 14-line poem, “How-To,” by Anders Carlson-Wee. The Scrapbook holds rather old-school opinions on the matter of poetic form, and we found it hard to scan “How-To.” Still, the poem’s language is incisive, it has a distinctive rhythm, and it ends with a…

Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, now much in the news as the president’s legal counsel, recently gained attention (as if he needed more) by tweeting a single word: You

Another prolix online headline recently caught our attention, this one at the Fix, the Washington Post’s popular politics blog: “This may be the biggest shoe to drop from the Trump-Michael Cohen tape.” The piece argued that the subpoena of Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg is likely an…

The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is proving a hard thing for liberals and progressives to counter. The man’s qualifications are nearly unparalleled; he is highly regarded by judges and law professors at elite institutions; and so far the efforts to find unflattering…

The recent news that government revenues are down, combined with the Treasury Department’s announcement that federal borrowing is up, has evoked howls of we-told-you-so from our friends on the left.

John Podhoretz reviews the latest of Tom Cruise's 'Mission: Impossible' movies—an instant action-adventure classic.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

In this latest episode, the Substandard takes on Mission Impossible: Fallout. The cohosts rank the M:I series (they all agree on what's the worst). JVL returns from San Francisco, Vic's Bachelor Week comes to an end, and Sonny appears on another podcast. Plus love from the fans, a spirit of the…

Grassley, citing Dem opposition, says: “I question the sincerity of demands for more documents.”

Also: A.E.W. Mason’s The Four Feathers, rare medieval Bible returned to cathedral, and more.

The continuation of tax cuts by other means.

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, has made it his business to ‘own the libs,’ and business is booming.

Last month at London’s O2 Arena, a few days after Justin Timberlake took to the stage, 6,000 people came through the doors to hear the psychologist Jordan Peterson. He was appearing with the writers Sam Harris and Douglas Murray, but to judge by my conversations Peterson was the main attraction.

Nearly a year since DeVos rescinded the controversial campus rape regulation, nothing’s changed.

Royals or celebrities have never been a draw for me, and you would not find me on the streets of Windsor or on Hollywood’s red carpets among the fawning crowds, gasping for breath at the sight of lavish jewels, couture gowns, and perfect bodies.

Press secretary says the president's call for the attorney general to fire special counsel

It’s not quite that simple.

Hey, is that the Rubicon?

Second verse, same as the first.

What should voters take away from a last-minute attack ad?

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

On Monday, Republican senators learned that their Arizona colleague Jeff Flake would be absent for much of the month of August, missing two full weeks of votes and potentially causing problems for the judicial confirmations schedule. Frustration with the decision grew among Senate offices and…

Also: The dangers of mistranslation, The Originalist reviewed, and more.

Democrats predict Armageddon. Because, guns.

As far as I know, Time magazine never ran a cover calling Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker the “Republican Savior.” But at one time, he fit the bill.

President Donald Trump—after first urging Republican lawmakers to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and then later arguing that there was, in fact, no point in pursuing such a bill until after November’s midterm elections—is now threatening to shut down the government if Congress does not fund…

Did the FBI really sever its relationship with Christopher Steele?

Facebook and Twitter suffer blows while the rest of the tech market strengthens.

Joseph Epstein on verbal inanity .