Byron York is a conservative journalist and political commentator who currently serves as chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner. He contributed political reporting and investigative pieces to The Weekly Standard from 1995 to 2012, covering Clinton-era controversies, congressional politics, and presidential campaigns. He is also a former White House correspondent for National Review.
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, who after the departure of Jeff Sessions has emerged as the Senate's leading immigration hawk, says he would support the legalization of all current DACA recipients -- nearly 800,000 of them -- if Congress would at the same time pass measures to protect…
President Trump brings an outsider's perspective to the long debate over the Senate filibuster. An overwhelming majority of the Senate disagrees with his desire to kill the filibuster, which means he doesn't have a prayer of winning. But he's not entirely wrong, either.
In the run-up to the Iraq War, a Bush White House official explained to me that 9/11 had changed the way we read national security intelligence. There was a relaxed way to read intelligence, he said, and there was an alarmed way to read intelligence. Sept. 11 proved that we had to read intelligence…
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.
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…
CLEVELAND — Walk around the Republican convention and talk to Ohioans, to Republicans from around the country, and to party strategists about the feud between Donald Trump and John Kasich, and here's the short version of what you'll hear: Kasich is being a jerk, but Trump is crazy to fight with him.
Arkansas Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor ran for re-election unopposed in 2008. At that time, as far as the Senate was concerned, Arkansas was a one-party Democratic state; there had been exactly one Republican in the U.S. Senate from Arkansas since Reconstruction. Pryor, son of Arkansas senator and…
Mitt Romney’s vice presidential short-list came down to a choice between a baby boomer, Rob Portman (born 1955), and a Gen Xer, Paul Ryan (born 1970). Romney’s decision to pick Ryan—the first post-boomer ever to run on a national ticket—was widely described as bold, in large part for highlighting…
In the eyes of the Obama administration, most Democratic lawmakers, and left-leaning editorial pages across the country, voter fraud is a problem that doesn't exist. Allegations of fraud, they say, are little more than pretexts conjured up by Republicans to justify voter ID laws designed to…
One of the mysteries of President Obama's abrupt June 2009 firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin concerns the dispute at the bottom of it all: Walpin's aggressive investigation of the misuse of AmeriCorps dollars by Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, California and an Obama…
The Golf Book
HENRY WAXMAN WAS OUTRAGED, and the Webb Hubbell prison recordings hadn't even been released yet. "The tapes," Waxman wrote in a letter to attorney general Janet Reno on April 21, "contain extremely personal conversations that are wholly unrelated to any investigation relevant to Mr. Hubbell or any…
When Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr finally released his report concluding that deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster committed suicide -- the same conclusion reached by previous investigations -- he immediately came under fire from leading Foster conspiracy theorists. "This is a…
Perhaps Janet Reno hoped to buy herself a little breathing room by approving a 60-day preliminary investigation that could lead to an independent-counsel probe of Vice President Al Gore's campaign phone calls. Her decision last week seemed designed -- at least in part -- to satisfy Republican…
SOMETHING IMPORTANT DID HAPPEN in the Senate hearings last week on the Clinton campaignfinance scandals. It just takes some explaining. A few months ago, I wrote a short piece for THE WEEKLY STANDARD on a suspicious $ 50,000 donation made to the Democratic party by Ernest Green, a longtime friend…
IT WAS ENOUGH TO LEAVE A Washington Post reader baffled. On March 16, the paper ran a front-page story featuring an interview with Wang Jun, the notorious Chinese arms dealer who sipped coffee at the White House during the Clinton reelection campaign. In a conversation with Post reporter Steven…
when a recently released memo placed First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton at the center of the White House Travel Office firings, some called it the smoking gun of Travelgate. Here's the proof, they said: She did it and she lied about it.
There' s been talk among Jessie Jackson supporters that a run for presid ent m 1996 would be a great way for Jackson to help the Democratic Party -- not by winning but by energizing borderline Congressional districts and helping Democrats take the House of Representatives back. Of course the…