The Editors represented the collective editorial voice of The Weekly Standard, publishing unsigned editorials, commentary, and occasional tributes from 2003 through the magazine's final year in 2018. These pieces covered a wide range of topics including domestic policy, foreign affairs, and memorials for notable figures, reflecting the magazine's institutional perspective on the issues of the day.
In most of the European Union, when the authorities hold a plebiscite and don’t get the result they want, they hold another, and another, until the voters see it their way. The English tradition holds democracy in greater esteem than that. Or at least it used to, before the Brexit mess.
Anti-Israel boycotts used to be a thing for left-wing loonies. No more.
High-ranking public officials have resigned for less than what these documents allege.
Elections aren’t immune from the human tendency to bend the rules and cheat.
Rand Paul is a grandstanding obstructionist whose chief joy seems to be blocking the few bills on which there is wide agreement.
A quiet leader, and a good one.
On November 25, Russian military forces opened fire on three Ukrainian ships off the coast of Crimea, rammed one of them, and seized all three. The ships were manned by 23 crew members. Ukrainian authorities say between three and six were injured.
On November 28, Democrats officially nominated Nancy Pelosi to be the next Speaker of the House. No one ran against her; she received 203 yeas against 32 nays. Democrats who vowed during the campaign to vote against the former speaker were always a small group. Their opposition—largely rhetorical,…
The E.U.’s faith in Iran is foolish, dangerous—and a mystery.
Vladimir Putin’s deliberate provocation is important. What’s more important is the U.S. response.
The U.S. has a way to further impair the Maduro regime.
He that hath knowledge spareth his words,” says the biblical proverb. All of us can profit from these words, but perhaps Donald Trump needs to hear them more than most. His helter-skelter, self-exculpatory statement on his administration’s relationship with Saudi Arabia was Trump at his logorrheic…
For Vladimir Putin, Interpol is just another tool.
A new report details the U.S. military is ill equipped to meet the threats of the next decade.
Stacey Abrams’s contemptible non-concession.
The last two years have seen a great deal of handwringing about the future of democracy. Scores of commentators, left and right, have claimed America’s democratic institutions are under siege. Some, mostly on the left, advocate a variety of changes to the Constitution in order to make our electoral…
A hudna is not a resolution.
From "fire and fury" to summits and appeasement.
A federal judge finds a way.
The Obama administration’s decision in 2014 to trade five imprisoned Taliban fighters for Bowe Bergdahl, the deserter captured by Afghan insurgents, continues to spawn ill consequences.
The midterm elections were a draw, with both sides able to make claims of victory. The Republicans bolstered their majority in the Senate, thanks largely to the Democrats’ shameful treatment of Brett Kavanaugh. The Democrats took the House, cutting off any chance that the GOP will pass major…
The real reason Jeff Sessions was fired.
The Obama Doctrine is over—at least in Latin America.
The U.S. captured them after 9/11. Now they’re negotiating the U.S. exit.
Liberals would prefer that he go away quietly. He won’t.
In the days since Robert Bowers murdered 11 congregants inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Americans have contemplated and debated the most urgent questions in our common life. There has been mercifully little discussion of gun laws. Observers on both sides have grasped that these…
The NRCC takes a stand.
Government by fiat—again.
No state that actively supports terrorism and foreign insurgencies ought to have access to the global financial system.
Lock them both up?
More and more Democrats are embracing socialized health insurance, but calling it that won’t necessarily help.
Demagoguery doesn’t always work.
The royals admit to murdering Jamal Khashoggi—but without admitting it.
A peculiar argument has begun to circulate on the right: Conservatives who care about the future of conservatism should not only refuse to vote for Republicans who share Donald Trump’s worst traits on November 6, they should support Democrats across the board. Doing so, this reasoning goes, would…
How should the U.S. respond to the crimes of a reforming ally?
On Monday, the Treasury Department announced that for the 2018 fiscal year, the federal government ran a $799 billion deficit. That’s $113 billion more than the year before, which is a 17 percent increase in the difference between the Treasury’s revenues and government spending. The 2017 tax cuts…
Nebraska’s junior senator finds hope all around—but not on TV, not on a screen, and not in Washington.
The lawsuit against Harvard may spell the end of race-based college admissions. Applauding that end is right—but insufficient.
When Democrats go low, Hillary Clinton goes with them
Swift fills in the blank space.
The California senator has plunged the nation into a bitter fight from which it will not soon emerge.
Putin’s malevolence revealed, again.
An ugly, dishonest and ever-changing attack on Brett Kavanaugh and the nomination process.
Administration officials seem to have talked the president out of leaving Syria. They’re right.
President Trump gets a laugh out of his relationship with the world's worst mass murderer.
“The burden is on the nominee”?
On September 20, 2001, speaking to a joint session of Congress, President George W. Bush famously articulated the key component of what would later be called the Bush Doctrine: “From this day forward,” the president said, “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by…
Christine Blasey Ford delivered sincere testimony and deserves respect and empathy. But the burden of proof was not met.
The return of the Bush Doctrine?
We haven’t “wiped out” ISIS. Or Al Qaeda. Not even close.
It’s hard for Republicans to talk about the economy when Trump’s talking about everything else. They should try anyway.
If only her Democratic colleagues would speak as plainly.
Rarely have we witnessed so many people pretend a controversy was about one thing when it was so obviously about another. Since September 16, when the name of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser became known—Christine Blasey Ford, a California psychologist, alleges that he sexually…
The ‘pay for slay’ program continues.
Bloomberg’s running again. And why not?
New hearings, little reason for hope.
To no one’s surprise, Russia is the main suspect in the mysterious attacks on U.S. diplomatic personnel in Cuba. Since 2016, 26 people at our embassy in Havana have experienced sudden and severe cognitive difficulties, and intelligence officials believe it’s due to attacks engineered by agents of…
Senate Democrats disgrace themselves again.
It’s a party of scoundrels and ideologues.
Aggression in the pursuit of policy victories is no vice.
The PLO was a malign presence in official Washington. Good riddance.
If Europe’s establishment parties won’t deal with immigration, voters will find a party that will.
I’ve decided not to seek reelection.” These words are spoken far too seldom in American politics, but few have spoken them with better reason than Rahm Emanuel. In his nearly eight years as Chicago’s mayor, he has failed by almost any metric.
Time for Republicans to pull up their big-boy pants.
“Cancel Brett Kavanaugh,” they reasoned.
She’s running for president and wants to get the Native American thing behind her. Good luck.
Beijing's crimes should elicit world condemnation.
If all this blustering is a preface of a policy reversal, it can’t come sooner.
Trump’s fabrications notwithstanding, voter fraud is a thing.
Hardly an overhaul, but it could have been much worse.
The Obama policy of engagement failed. Bring back the stick.
Donald Trump just couldn’t help it.
If the goal is to postpone the Supreme Court nominee's hearings, any argument will do.
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.
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…
There’s a reason U.S. presidents don’t normally have fixers.
California lawmakers want you to know how much they care.
The leading Democrat has somehow escaped real scrutiny.
If Wuerl keeps his job, then the Catholic Church's "zero tolerance" policy is a sham.
The country appears headed for another nightmare. What’s the U.S. role?
Obama officials wanted to shut down for-profit colleges altogether. They almost did.
Mistakes were made, wreaths were laid.
If the Chinese buy Steinway, we fully expect to see an epic America-First meltdown.
Senate Dems request thousands of trivial Kavanaugh documents. Nice try.
Why not deregulate everybody?
"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…
Colombia is a functioning republic with a bright future. Venezuela, its neighbor, is a nightmare. What accounts for the difference?
When protectionism means protecting the multinationals.
The search for a decent writer exposes the editorial board’s unprincipled prejudice.
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.
The continuation of tax cuts by other means.
Democrats predict Armageddon. Because, guns.
“Good for the country, good for them, good for us.”
The White House disinvites Kaitlan Collins.
The Pyrrhic logic of trade wars.
The president’s blustery tweet was part of a defensible policy on Iran.
A multi-million-dollar agency gets free work from poor writers.
Did the president’s “team” actually discuss handing over U.S. citizens to Kremlin interrogators?
Donald Trump has long been loath to concede that operatives of the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election, feeling as he does that the media like to talk about it mainly to suggest that he only defeated Hillary Clinton thanks to the aid of foreign troublemakers. It’s…
Must everything be about the Washington and the presidency?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she’s “willing to learn and evolve.” That would be good.
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump vowed to nominate federal judges “in the mold of” Antonin Scalia, and he has lived up to his word. Neil Gorsuch was a superior pick to replace the late Justice Scalia in 2017. And the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme…
A new new low.
Much to lose, little to gain.
One of China’s bravest departs again to the darkness.
President Donald Trump visited Brussels on July 10 as part of his three-nation European trip. There he offended our NATO allies and outraged both the American and European news media by excoriating the many alliance members who spend below the 2 percent of GDP they agreed to spend on defense in…
He’s right—or at least not wrong.
Do Democrats know what a judge does?
Let the hearings begin.
North Korea was never going to “denuclearize.”
It’s hard to think of a more American company than Harley-Davidson, the Milwaukee-based motorcycle maker. Anybody who has ever seen a Harley—or, more likely, heard one—knows it has a sturdy and uniquely American style. The company’s motto: “All for freedom. Freedom for all.” So you might expect an…
Yes, elections have consequences.
Is anyone paying attention to Iraq?
Schumer to Waters: Cut it out.
Why must museums patronize their visitors?
Images of screaming children torn away from parents, photos of toddlers and even babies sitting alone in characterless detention centers, repellent bloviators defending the new policy as if splitting up families were itself the goal . . . the controversy over the Trump administration’s new “zero…
On June 14, Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice’s inspector general, released a long-awaited report on the partisan shenanigans of a few FBI agents in the lead-up to the 2016 election. The report sharply criticizes then-director James Comey for his bad judgment and disregard for agency…
The Human Rights Council was a hangout for anti-Semitic cranks.
How quickly a label becomes a libel.
Call it what you like—it’s still racial discrimination.
Maybe we’ll actually enjoy the tournament this year—for once
The June 12 meeting in Singapore between Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong‑un has generated a bewildering array of responses from observers around the world. These responses do not fall along predictable ideological lines. Back and forth across the ideological span, we find…
“He found the way and I jumped on it.”
The campaign bus, sans the candidate.
What do you do with a problem like Aquarius?
When are we going to start doing very, very well?
Senate Democrats have turned the confirmation process into an exercise in sabotage.
We all will—in about eight years.
In short, the Obama administration lied.
The absurd logic of hyper-individualism is upon us.
On the network’s employment of Joy-Ann Reid, Ben Rhodes, and other champions of truth.
The tension between peaceable nations and the Russian Federation intensifies with each passing week. It is the path Vladimir Putin has chosen. The latest development is more serious than it may sound: Russian billionaire and Putin crony Roman Abramovich has had his visa renewal application…
Greitens, Trump—and us.
The world body’s leader on disarmament? Syria, of course.
Into the light—or back to the shadows?
There is a great deal we don’t know about the case of Stefan Halper, the Anglo-American academic who insinuated himself into the Trump campaign in order to help the FBI learn about any connections to Russian election meddling. The president and his allies claim the FBI planted Halper as a spy with…
The partial repeal of Dodd Frank could have gone farther, but it's a good start.
The arrest of 10 women’s rights advocates is as disturbing as it is mysterious.
Pompeo is right: You can’t separate a rogue regime from its roguery.
It wasn’t a real election. But for the Chavistas, there was definitely a point.
The eminent scholar who helped the West understand itself and its adversaries
Is Donald Trump a masterful negotiator or an unqualified bumbler? The truth likely lies somewhere in between, but we want to avoid closed-mindedness here and accept the possibility that a mercurial president can secure a beneficial agreement by means of wrong-footing the other side’s negotiators.…
One year ago—on May 17, 2017—deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein signed Order 3915-2017. To “ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” he appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller to be special counsel for the…
The special counsel is everything we want in a public servant, but Americans need to see a conclusion.
Democrats won’t find pickups as easy as they hoped.
They’re not protests. They’re suicide-riots.
We like what he’s done. But the time has come.
Early on the morning of May 10, Donald Trump tweeted a dramatic 32-second video celebrating the return home of three U.S. citizens held until last week in North Korea. It was a made-for-TV moment, and the slick video ensured that millions of Americans who didn’t stay up until 3 a.m. to watch it…
With the delusion of U.S.-Iran harmony now over, what’s possible?
Solar perplexus.
Why can’t Democratic grandees admit that somebody else is in charge?
Progressives are free to remit their savings to the U.S. Treasury.
If Democrats love the United States and loathe Donald Trump as much as they claim—and we have no reason to doubt their sincerity in these regards—they ought to express delight and gratitude when the president appoints someone with none of his own odious qualities to a high-level position. Instead,…
In Kentucky, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona, and Colorado, teachers have refused to teach until lawmakers agree to raise their pay. Some have stormed statehouses; others have closed their schools and walked out. The mainstream press affords them lavish and highly sympathetic coverage, and…
So much of any week’s White House news falls under the category of palace intrigue that it’s easy to overlook the crucial revelations. This week’s report by NBC News that White House chief of staff John Kelly regularly calls Donald Trump an “idiot” and has cast himself as the country’s “savior”…
Whatever he may say, Kim Jong-un wants the Americans gone.
In Arizona and elsewhere, teachers aren’t getting rich—but are they as poor as the media claim?
Heads, Iran wins. Tails, the U.S. Loses.
Not a great weekend for the American news media.
"The military mission to eradicate ISIS in Syria is coming to a rapid end, with ISIS being almost completely destroyed,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced on April 4. “The United States and our partners remain committed to eliminating the small ISIS presence in Syria that…
A bracing reminder of an easily forgotten commonplace.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by our medical and scientific professionals.
Enough with the Randstanding already.
Albright denounces fascism but not its precondition.
Tight messaging and internal discipline don’t make a presidency—the Obama administration was extremely disciplined in its public pronouncements and a disaster in almost every other respect. But the present administration suffers from an almost total lack of coherence in its statements to the…
For 16 months, Democrats have complained that Republicans have put their political party over the best interests of the country by rationalizing and normalizing the unbecoming behavior of Donald Trump. We’ve often agreed with those assessments. Republicans, sadly, have made a habit of putting…
Diplomacy matters.
Diplomacy matters.
Evidence of delusion?
It’s mean and unreasonable, but maybe the base likes it
It's time for the FBI to release them.
In pardoning Scooter Libby, President Trump does the right thing.
Speakers of the House of Representatives don’t ordinarily retire before they’re turned into minority leaders. But on April 11, Paul Ryan announced he would leave his seat at the end of this term. His decision, which had been rumored for months, wasn’t entirely surprising. His children are still…
In foreign affairs, there’s a lot to be said for unpredictability. Puzzlement can induce one’s enemies to hold back or make stupid decisions. Henry Kissinger famously portrayed Nixon as acting “somewhat crazy” to keep the Soviets guessing—even to the point of dramatically elevating the readiness…
From hero to zero.
The U.S. must bring hellish consequences on the dictator of Damascus.
Perhaps more secure than he should be.
Although this magazine has frequently lamented President Trump's tendency to praise Vladimir Putin and his regime in public, we've also applauded the administration for its punitive actions against the Kremlin's dictator. And we've urged the administration to go further by, for instance, listing…
There were many decades when the visit of a crown prince of Saudi Arabia to the United States didn't cause much stir in world affairs. But these are different days for the Middle East and for the globe. The three-week visit of Mohammed bin Salman, in which he met with the president and an array of…
Republicans are just over six months away from the 2018 midterm elections, and there's plenty to worry about. Midterms almost always favor the party out of power, and Democratic voters are far more enthused about the coming elections than their Republican correlatives. And although one should never…
Republicans are just over six months away from the 2018 midterm elections, and there's plenty to worry about. Midterms almost always favor the party out of power, and Democratic voters are far more enthused about the election than their Republican correlatives. And although one should never…
Republicans have been awfully quiet over the last few days, and they probably should have been. The question is why they were so quiet.
To say antisemitism is on the rise in Europe is commonplace. A dismayingly high percentage of Europeans (often in the 40s, according to surveys) believe Jews are too powerful in their countries' governments, too influential in their media, and probably more loyal to Israel than to the countries in…
The international effort to punish Vladimir Putin for the March 4 attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal and his daughter is an enormously encouraging sign that free nations are at last turning against the Kremlin and its dictator. Britain has expelled 23 Russian diplomats from their posts in the…
On Thursday, March 29, Ben Carson found himself in the news again. This time the problem wasn't his purchase of an expensive dining hutch (for which the housing secretary received condign criticism, including from this magazine) or his aim of shortening his agency's garbled mission statement (for…
On Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un paid a surprise visit to Beijing. It was his first time out of his country since well before he became Dear Respected Leader in 2011. Kim arrived in an armored train, met with Chinese president Xi Jinping, and the two appeared in a series of photo-ops…
Berkeley, California, has long occupied a soft spot in the liberal heart. In popular mythology, it's the 1960s birthplace of the free speech movement, in which idealistic young hippies helped push for civil rights and an end to the Vietnam War.
It’s not often that the head of a federal agency asks Congress for less money than the agency received the year before. So infrequent is it that one might reasonably assume the circumstance would generate some hint of intellectual curiosity on the part of reporters and politicos. If an agency head…
This weekend, hundreds of thousands of young people participated in the “March for Our Lives” in Washington, D.C., the culmination of efforts by student activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who had survived the recent shooting that claimed 17 lives.
We would have more respect for Vladimir Putin if he simply dispensed with his country’s elections and declared himself president-for-life. This would spare us the idiotic burden of discussing the Russian state’s sexennial public-relations stunts. Everybody inside and outside the country knows the…
American liberals love the First Amendment’s “freedom of speech” clause. They remember their brave forerunners—muckraking journalists, civil rights activists, religious and political dissidents—and venerate the constitutional right that enabled their eventual vindication. Yet it’s striking how…
Imagine: A high-level political consultant admits he mined Facebook data to target likely voters in swing states. He says he helped “build this thing called targeted sharing” that “allowed us to use Facebook to persuade people.” Cambridge Analytica? No, that was Democratic strategist Jim Messina,…
Liberals love the First Amendment’s “freedom of speech” clause. They rightly remember their forerunners—liberal journalists, civil rights activists, religious and political dissidents—and venerate the constitutional right that eventually vindicated these brave citizens. Yet it’s striking how often…
Public officials tend to spend too much money on themselves and their offices. It’s an unfortunate part of the human condition—by definition public officials spend resources that don’t belong to them, and so they will often spend more than they have to. Media allegations of excessive spending by…
Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, was fired on Friday by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions had received a report from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General following a probe into McCabe’s conduct while he served in the FBI. McCabe, who took over as…
On March 13, President Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—via Twitter—and replaced him with the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo. The choice of Pompeo to lead the State Department is an excellent one. At Langley, he earned the respect of a bureaucracy deeply…
It is highly likely that on March 4 Russia used a military-grade nerve agent in an attempt to kill one of its former spies in the United Kingdom. On March 14, British prime minister Theresa May retaliated by banishing 23 Russian diplomats “who have been identified as undeclared intelligence…
British Prime Minister Theresa May took action against the Kremlin on Wednesday when she banished 23 Russian diplomats “who have been identified as foreign intelligence officers” from her nation’s shores. The expulsion was in direct response to the alleged—but “highly likely”—Russian use of an…
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is considering a plan to integrate drones across U.S. national airspace. Several large corporations have proposed a low-altitude control grid, which they would operate, to manage these unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), popularly referred to as drones. For…
We’re aware that some elected officials—perhaps more than a few—regard the average voter with contempt. Such politicians may succeed for a time, but contempt is hard to hide, and they soon find themselves giving talks at ritzy confabs about their regrettably brief time in public life.
President Donald Trump’s decision last week to impose stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum—25 percent and 10 percent, respectively—rivals in sheer unpopularity the president’s early-2017 travel ban. Many of this nation’s chief trading partners lobbied against the tariffs—Canada, South Korea, Japan,…
Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. And believe me, right now dealing with Congress—believe me—believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. . . . But that’s not how—that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy…
"The powerful Jews are my enemy," remarked Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan at his organization’s annual “Saviours’ Day” celebration in Chicago on February 25. That was just one of several of his choice anti-Semitic tropes. Another one, oddly stated in the third person: “The FBI has been the…
“The powerful Jews are my enemy,” remarked Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan at his organization’s annual “Saviours’ Day” celebration in Chicago in late February. That was just one of several choice anti-semitic tropes. Another one, oddly stated in the third person: “The FBI has been the worst…
President Trump’s recent decision to slap huge new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum is certain to wreak havoc on the American economy. So we argued last week when the decision was announced: Tariffs often make plenty of political sense but penalize domestic industries no less than foreign…
After President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy accordingly, western politicos and commentators heaped contempt on the move and predicted violence and bloodshed in Israel and in the Arab street. Hamas, the Islamic terror…
When it comes to prizes and awards, it is entirely possible that our European friends are making gentle fun of us Americans. How else to explain, for example, the Nobel Prize in Literature for Bob Dylan? Or the Charlemagne Prize awarded to Bill Clinton a few years ago?
On March 1, President Donald Trump was widely expected to announce a new round of trade restrictions on steel and aluminum. But that morning word leaked out that the announcement had been postponed—maybe permanently canceled. Then we heard the president had called industry leaders to the White…
There’s something wrong with politics when it becomes personal—especially when we’re wrong about the person.
“Pyongyang is a crucial node in the international network of proliferation that already includes China and Russia as primary providers, Pakistan and North Korea as active disseminators, and Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia among the final consumers. No less unsettling is the prospect that North Korea…
In 2007, Warren Buffett took a $1 million bet on an investment. He won. In his annual letter to Berkshire-Hathaway investors, made public on Saturday, he detailed the wager’s final tallies.
On Saturday, the United Nations Security Council adopted a “30-day ceasefire” for Syria to be implemented “without delay.” As we might have expected, that’s when the shelling started.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump tossed out a characteristically jarring idea: Arm teachers. His original statements were less than clear, so at a White House public forum he clarified: “I don’t want teachers to have guns, I want certain highly adept people that understand weaponry, guns—if they…
On February 14, a deeply troubled young man named Nikolas Cruz walked into the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Cruz, 19, took an AR-15 rifle out of a black duffel bag and began firing at students in the hallways and in classrooms. In all, he murdered 17 people and injured…
On Tuesday, Walmart’s value, as reflected in its stock price, dropped by more than 10 percent. That’s nearly $31 billion. It had a bad quarter and in no small part suffered as a result of complications with its online inventory restocking system—it ran out of some items in demand and so couldn’t…
Yesterday the U.N. Security Council convened on “the Palestinian question.” This is a regular, and regularly absurd, occurrence. The absurdity reached a new level, however, with a theatrical display of pique by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” That, of course, was President Barack Obama's rather lame joke, delivered during the third presidential debate of 2012. He was ridiculing Mitt Romney’s assertion that Russia is America’s…
"Drain the swamp." The phrase went from catchy rallying cry to grating cliché in the space of a year. But phrases often become clichés because they signify some important truth. The swamp does, in fact, need draining: Our federal bureaucracy has become so expansive, power-hungry, and unaccountable…
Electing a billionaire agitator to the presidency may have its advantages. Such a man can break conventions that should long ago have been broken and advance policies that more established politicians might believe in but fear to execute.
When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meets with Turkish officials tomorrow, he’ll have plenty of unpleasant topics to discuss. At the top of Turkey’s list of grievances is American support for the YPG, or the People’s Protection Units, a Kurdish-Syrian militia that has wreaked devastation on ISIS…
The Trump administration recently announced that it will “reassess” American aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA). That’s the agency charged with overseeing Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 and, of equal importance, their descendants. The United States will…
“We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation,” President Trump said in his inaugural address. On Monday, the administration attempted to make good on that promise by announcing what many in the media mistakenly called a…
The Man Booker Prize is Great Britain's most prestigious literary award. It is conferred annually on a novel, written and published in English, and guarantees a considerable boost in sales plus global fame (and about $70,000 in cash) for the novelist. In the United Kingdom, and in various parts of…
The 2018 Winter Olympic Games have opened in the mountains of northeastern South Korea. The next two weeks will showcase some of the finest athletes in the world: men and women who’ve trained relentlessly and, whether they win a medal or not, deserve our esteem and best wishes. The United States…
With Republicans in charge of the White House and Congress, you might expect to see some budgetary restraint. Or at least some gesture to fiscal conservatism. You would be wrong. Consider the bloated budget deal the Senate arrived at on February 7.
Every year since 2010, the venerable baby food company Gerber has chosen a “Gerber baby.” This year’s winner is 18-month-old Lucas Warren of Georgia—the first Gerber baby with Down Syndrome. Lucas’s mother, Cortney, entered her son into the company’s annual contest, which drew around 140,000…
Donald Trump used his State of the Union address last week to celebrate U.S. and coalition gains against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The president reminded his audience that a year earlier he had “pledged that we would work with our allies to extinguish ISIS from the face of the earth. One year later,…
If you hold stock—and most Americans do—the financial news of the last few days has been pretty jarring.
The only thing we can say with absolute certainty regarding the controversy over the Devin Nunes memo is this: It’s unwise to accept any claims made with absolute certitude about its contents and their meaning.
President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address was a success. The theater was unbeatable. The president’s special guests were particularly moving at this year’s address: a double amputee who somehow escaped from North Korea by sheer strength of will; a police officer who adopted a drug…
A recent study of abuses in for-profit postsecondary education highlights a reputational disparity within American higher education. For-profit programs and colleges are distrusted and maligned. Their proven value to populations for whom traditional college is out of reach and the various…
A recent study of abuses in for-profit post-secondary education highlights a reputational disparity within American higher education. For-profit programs and colleges are distrusted and maligned. Their proven value to populations for whom traditional college is out of reach and various good-faith…
The State of the Union address is perfect for President Donald Trump. His showmanship and sense of dramatic timing; the endless applause and moving stories, lovingly told; the pleasure he takes in enunciating truths no one could disagree with—it’s almost as if the whole cockamamie tradition were…
The state of our union is divided and anxious.
The trial and conviction of Larry Nassar, team doctor for USA Gymnastics and osteopathic physician at Michigan State University, has exposed something rotten at the heart of an American Olympic sport.
The once-great nation of Venezuela hardly looks like a state anymore, far less a great one. This week government forces finally caught up with Oscar Pérez—the former action-movie star and police officer who led a ragtag band of pro-democracy protesters. He and six of his confederates were killed in…
On January 22, President Trump announced the imposition of a 30 percent tariff on imported solar panels and a 20 percent tariff on imported washing machines. The Trade Act of 1974 allows the president to impose duties when an imported product becomes “substantial cause of serious injury” to the…
On Tuesday, January 22, President Donald Trump announced the imposition of a 30 percent tariff on imported solar panels and a 20 percent tariffs on washing machines. Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the president to issue duties when an imported product becomes “substantial cause of…
On January 17, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told us what she’s really up to. She was the keynote speaker at the American Enterprise Institute conference “Bush-Obama School Reform: Lessons Learned.” There she gave a tough-but-fair appraisal of the costly failed federal attempts at education…
Now that we have one full year of the Trump presidency in the history books, isn’t it time for Trump’s conservative critics to acknowledge his election was worth it?
Diplomatic “talks” are often little more than that—gabfests—but Tuesday’s meeting in Vancouver signals a hard-headed determination to deal with the problem of North Korea. The talks, hosted by the U.S. and Canada, brought together 20 nations, primarily those that aided South Korea in the Korean War…
He was twice on the cover of National Review. He was the subject of admiring profiles in the Washington Post, Time, and, yes, THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Throughout his first term as governor of New Jersey, he was described time and again as a “rising star” of the GOP and a certain presidential contender.…
The Bundy family are anti-government extremists. The ranchers have been behind two armed standoffs with the federal government—a showdown in Nevada over cattle grazing rights in 2014 and the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge building just outside of Burns, Oregon, to protest…
On New Year’s Day, Donald Trump fulminated on Twitter that the United States had “foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt…
It should have been a simple vote to reauthorize an important law, but ideologues allied with exhibitionists to turn it into a circus. Throw in a badly informed Trump tweet, and we had a carnival of folly—which is to say, an ordinary day on Capitol Hill.
On Sunday night at the Golden Globe awards in Beverly Hills, Oprah Winfrey accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award and delivered what many considered an inspiring speech. Since then, the center-left media have been abuzz with talk of a Winfrey presidential run in 2020. Gayle King,…
In October, we recounted Tennessee senator Bob Corker’s speedy journey from being a cautious ally of Donald Trump to being one of the president’s sharpest critics. By the end of that journey—or that leg of the journey—the Tennessean was calling the White House an “adult day care center” and…
We’ve known for some time that Donald Trump poses a severe challenge to conservatism. What we’re only just beginning to appreciate is that Hillary Clinton poses a challenge, too. The challenge may be stated in the form of a question: Does the right favor the prosecution of Clinton, or not?
The American left has always been more comfortable with domestic policy than foreign. Progressives are happy to talk about injustice at home. But what about injustice abroad? Are there circumstances in which the United States can use its power and influence to advance justice or to check repression…
The Senate's longest-serving Republican, Orrin Hatch of Utah, has announced that he will not seek reelection. Mitt Romney, as The Weekly Standard was first to confirm, intends to run for the seat. This news item provoked a characteristically fevered round of speculation and theorizing from the…
The country’s economic outlook is, in general, very good. The stock market broke records in 2017. The nation’s unemployment rate stands at 4 percent and appears to be falling, with so-called discouraged workers (those who had given up looking for employment) now reentering the workforce. If the…
At this point, the evidence is irrefutable: The Obama administration got Iran wrong. So did the international foreign-policy establishment. So did the New York Times and nearly every major center-left media outlet in the United States and Europe.
The Obama administration will be remembered for a number of disgraces in foreign affairs, prominent among them its terrible deal with Iran and its dithering over the war in Syria. Deserving of a place on that list is America’s acquiescence in Russia’s attack on Ukraine, to which the Trump…
We didn’t think congressional Republicans could pass a major tax bill without creating something worse than the status quo. The party’s ideological confusion and fractiousness, its thin majority in the Senate, the president’s penchant for distracting tweets: We assumed the worst. And yet the tax…
For progressives and members of the resistance determined to find evidence of fascism, the story was too good to disbelieve. A report in the Washington Post last weekend claimed that “the Trump administration has informed multiple divisions within the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS]…
As Republicans prepare to celebrate their tax reform victory, a potential disaster lurks right around the corner.
“Another entry from the authoritarian handbook,” says David Axelrod. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes thinks it’s a “hunt” for “ideological subversives.” The public is financing “lies” to “eviscerate environmental protections,” according to Robert Reich.
Despite the best efforts of the president and the Republican National Committee, voters in Alabama didn’t elect a man credibly accused of sexual predation to the U.S. Senate.
Very few congressional Republicans wanted Roy Moore to win. They knew, for one thing, that Democrats were prepared to link them to him for at least the next three years. Rather than make it clear that Moore had no place in the GOP, however, many referred blithely to “the will of the people” and the…
Very few Congressional Republicans wanted Roy Moore to win. They knew, for one thing, that Democrats were prepared to link them to him for at least the next two years. Rather than make it clear that Moore had no place in the GOP, however, many referred blithely to “the will of the people” and the…
Last week, President Donald Trump openly acknowledged what everybody knows: that Jerusalem in the capital of Israel. He promised that the United States would build an embassy there and thus defied America’s foreign policy establishment, the European Union, the British foreign secretary, the French…
In May, when deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” we welcomed the news. So did the president. “As I…
On December 5, the Republican National Committee formalized its support for Roy Moore by sending $170,000 to aid his campaign in the race’s final week. The decision came days after President Donald Trump announced his endorsement of Moore. The money is a pittance in the world of modern campaign…
Any Republican tax bill is bound to be hotly criticized. That’s politics and the mainstream media. We were unprepared, however, for the outpouring of hysterical denunciation we’ve witnessed over the last several days as the GOP tax plan comes closer to final passage.
"If we’re going to make the investments we need,” remarked President-elect Barack Obama in 2008, “we must also be willing to shed the spending we don’t. . . . We cannot sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness or exist solely because…
This should have been a terrific week for Donald Trump. The Senate, even with its slim and quarrelsome majority, appears ready to pass the major tax overhaul the president has been pushing for. An attempt by a rogue federal agency to forestall the president’s appointment of a new director was…
North Korea’s Kim Jong-un seems increasingly addicted to scaring the world by firing ballistic missiles. After a lull of over two months, the regime fired another on Wednesday, the 16th this year. The launches have become more frequent and more aggressive. In August and September, the regime…
Greg Schiano will not get the head-coaching job at Tennessee. Indeed, he may never again get a top-level head-coaching job.
If you asked any ordinarily informed citizen if the State Department considered North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism, the answer would likely be “Of course.” And yet for nine years, from the end of the George W. Bush administration until November 20, the world’s most sinister and repressive…
In 1986, President Reagan signed the largest overhaul of the U.S. tax system since the New Deal. The law simplified the tax code and substantially reduced individual rates for the second time in Reagan’s presidency—the top rate coming down to 28 percent from 50 percent. When Reagan had appealed for…
In 1986, President Reagan signed the largest overhaul of the U.S. tax system since the New Deal. The law simplified the tax code and substantially reduced individual rates for the second time in Reagan’s presidency—the top rate coming down to 28 percent from 50 percent. When Reagan had appealed for…
Widespread allegations of sexual harassment have in recent weeks rocked legislatures across Europe and North America. In London, harassment claims have brought down one cabinet minister and are threatening to bring parliamentary business to a standstill. In Brussels, the European parliament has…
The urge to vote for the outsider—the dissenter, the maverick, the troublemaker hated by those elites—is a reasonable one. Political parties become stale and predictable, their officeholders self-seeking and cowardly. The ordinary voter, exasperated by his elected leaders’ inability or refusal to…
There are, in essence, three things wrong with the federal tax code. They are, in descending order of importance, that corporations pay an absurdly high rate; that the code is a labyrinthine mess that turns the work of paying one’s taxes into a nightmare; and that marginal individual rates have in…
“Iran has never had a better friend than Obama,” Donald Trump tweeted in December 2013, as U.S. negotiators were finalizing a deal with Iran over the country’s nuclear program. So began Trump’s long campaign of ridiculing Barack Obama for the latter’s hopelessly gullible view of the Iranian regime.…
The allegations made against U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama, published in the Washington Post last week, would seem to be indisputable. In his 30s, according to the Post’s story, Moore cultivated romantic relationships with teenaged girls and in one case initiated sexual contact with a…
The November 7 elections, in which Democrats took governorships in Virginia and New Jersey and most of the other closely contested offices, have been analyzed and debated in the way off-year races always are. The winners interpret their wins as a sign of imminent triumph; the losers make excuses.
It's impossible to know—and difficult even to contemplate—what sort of nihilistic depravity could drive a man to do what Devin Kelley did on the morning of November 5. Kelley killed 26 and injured at least 20 at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas.
This post has been updated.
The word “hypocrisy,” as we’ve had occasion to remark in this space before, is among the most misused and abused terms in American politics—which, given the state of our discourse, is saying something. Generally missing in attributions of hypocrisy is the essential element of secrecy or…
Last week’s Senate hearings on Russia-linked social media accounts inciting political animosity gave us a vivid picture of one way in which the Russian government is making trouble in America. You don’t have to believe that Russian social media “bots” and “trolls” stole the election from Hillary…
Henry Kissinger aptly characterized two centuries of Russian foreign policy in his 2001 book Does America Need a Foreign Policy? “Throughout its history, with all its ups and downs,” he wrote, “Russia has conducted a persistent, patient, and skillful diplomacy: with Prussia and Austria against the…
We don't use the word “lie” with abandon in these pages. It’s used far too often in public life, to the point at which nearly every statement someone disagrees with is characterized as a “lie.” The L-word is tightly regulated in parliamentary bodies—in Congress, for example—and rightly so. Once you…
News broke Monday that the FBI is investigating what appears to be a suspect deal between Puerto Rico’s state-owned power company, Prepa, and a small Montana-based company called Whitefish Energy Holdings LLC. Under the terms of the $300 million contract, Whitefish was to assist in the rebuilding…
It’s not the sort of news President Trump’s Democratic adversaries were hoping for, but it was far from nothing. On Monday we learned of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort’s business partner Rick Gates. We also learned that a foreign…
American universities are out of control. Tuition rises even as the quality of teaching sinks and the value of a degree falls into question. Students assault speakers and suffer no punishment. Others are accused of crimes and condemned without evidence or due process. All the while, curriculums are…
Everyone’s talking about the civil war in the Republican party. It seems more like a surrender to us.
In a speech on the Senate floor on October 24, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) announced his intention not to seek reelection in 2018. We regret his decision and the state of affairs that led him to make it: Flake is a solid conservative and a decent man, an implacable critic of government waste and a…
For a moment, we were transported back to the 1990s. There was Hillary Clinton being asked about yet another highly suspect circumstance involving gross improprieties and brazen lies and sidestepping the question by blaming that ever-present confederation: her enemies. “I think the real story is…
In a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) announced his intention not to seek reelection in 2018. We regret his decision and the state of affairs that led him to make it: Flake is a solid conservative and is a decent man, an implacable critic of government waste and a…
"Do we want Iran to have a nuclear weapon or not?" asks Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a video making its way around the Internet. “The answer? No. So why is President Trump trying to make it easier for Iran to get a nuclear weapon?”
“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
There are fewer and fewer economic principles on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, and any point of consilience will surely be forgotten as some momentary partisan need overwhelms reason and sense. Surely, however, we can all agree on a few points:
There are fewer and fewer economic principles on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, and any point of consilience will surely be forgotten as some momentary partisan need overwhelms reason and sense. Surely, however, we can all agree on a few points:
"Do we want Iran to have a nuclear weapon or not?" asks Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a video making its way around the Internet. “The answer? No. So why is President Trump trying to make it easier for Iran to get a nuclear weapon?”
Celebrities are mostly left-wingers. The statement is boringly obvious to any mildly intelligent person. But we still have to say it because the celebrities themselves don’t seem to know it. Indeed, the high-profile personalities of our entertainment industry seem to think of themselves as…
Last week, President Trump signed an executive order that, among other things, stops cost-sharing payments to insurance companies. The purpose of these payments is to lower the deductibles and co-pays for lower- and middle-income Americans purchasing health plans on the Obamacare insurance…
The Soviet Union took an intensely discriminatory attitude to its history. What the regime wanted remembered, it magnified beyond all recognition; what it wanted forgotten, it erased. The Battle of Stalingrad, for instance, was endlessly propagandized by the Soviets; whereas the First World War, a…
American liberals dominate this country’s cultural life. Universities, the news media, the entertainment industry, our cultural institutions—these are populated and run mainly, and in many cases exclusively, by liberals. What liberals, the vast majority of whom identify as Democrats, don’t dominate…
On October 1, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) announced that it would accept girls into membership. Beginning next year, Cub Scout programs will admit girls, with the ultimate goal of allowing girls to progress to the rank of Eagle Scout.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump disparaged the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran in characteristically superlative terms: “My number-one priority,” he said to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March 2016, “is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in…
In examining the GOP tax plan in this space, we noted that the provision eliminating the estate tax looked a lot like a bargaining chip “to be negotiated away to placate deficit hawks.”
In examining the GOP tax plan in this space, we noted that the provision eliminating the estate tax looked a lot like a bargaining chip “to be negotiated away to placate deficit hawks.”
From almost the moment Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency in June 2015, the term “Republican establishment” has been ubiquitous. Sometimes it means Republican moderates, sometimes it means GOP officeholders generally, and sometimes it just means any Republican not named Donald…
You don't have to be a liberal or conservative, woman or man, to find Harvey Weinstein's conduct repulsive. Weinstein, co-founder of Miramax Films and the eponymous Weinstein Company, producer of dozens of well-known, well-regarded, and multiple-Oscar-winning movies over the past three decades,…
Just occasionally, the United Nations gets things exactly right. A fine example of that is the recent release of a report from its special investigative mission on human-rights abuses in Crimea. The U.N. verdict? There have been “multiple and grave” violations—up to and including illegal detentions…
Presidential candidate Donald Trump disparaged the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran in characteristically superlative terms: “My number-one priority,” he said to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March 2016, “is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in…
“Over the years,” wrote the editors of the New York Times, “the gun lobby, claiming to defend the convenience of hunters and other gun owners, has so bullied Washington that . . . sensible proposals seem beyond reach. But as gun mayhem continues to mount, the political roadblock looks less and less…
Responding to tragedy is never easy, but the best response is often the one involving the fewest words. That’s true when a friend receives terrible news—nothing’s worse than the loudmouth uncle trying to be “helpful”—and it’s true in moments of national grief like the present one.
“To preserve our civil liberties,” Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch remarked in an address last week, “we have to constantly work on being civil with one another. . . . In a very real way, self-governance turns on our ability to try to treat—to try at least to treat—others as our equals, as…
Sanctions hurt everybody. That’s the problem with imposing them on a reckless and brutal regime. Instead of pressuring the few in charge, you punish the people as a whole. Sometimes that’s necessary, but it’s never ideal.
The last time Republicans advanced a serious plan to overhaul the tax code, Madonna had a No. 1 hit and Back to the Future had just been released on VHS. The new Republican tax plan harkens back to Ronald Reagan’s 1986 reform package, promising a future of stronger growth with less economic…
Stories about expensive presidential vacationing appeal to very few people outside reporters and political hacks. For all our belief in equality, we Americans will tolerate a touch of royalism in our presidents. Barack Obama’s travel may have cost taxpayers around $10 million a year, and Donald…
During the George W. Bush presidency, Democrats were vehement and clamorous defenders of Americans’ civil liberties. They inveighed against the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs as though the agency were spying on ordinary Americans in their homes and generally behaving like the East…
To understand the pragmatic realities of federal governance in the 21st century, one must recognize the existence of a fourth branch of government: the administrative state. We have some two million federal bureaucrats with extraconstitutional legislative powers. Not only do they write the reams of…
American liberals think of themselves as champions of the excluded and ill-treated, friends of the little guy persecuted by the system. Their instinctive sympathy for the disadvantaged and overlooked is evidence of a charitable worldview and a peculiar inheritance of Christian humanism. For a…
"I will immediately terminate President Obama’s illegal executive order on immigration. Immediately.” That was Donald Trump speaking on the day he launched his presidential campaign: June 16, 2015. The executive order he was referencing was the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. It…
To understand the pragmatic realities of federal governance in the 21st century, one must recognize the existence of a fourth branch of government: the administrative state. We have some two million federal bureaucrats with extraconstitutional legislative powers. Not only do they write the reams of…
You may remember the grim warnings of draconian budgets cuts issued by liberal pundits, congressional Democrats, and the Obama administration in early 2013. That was just before “sequester” took effect—a result of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which ordered automatic, across-the-board budget cuts…
Even before the Senate failed to pass a weak health care reform bill in mid-July, congressional Republicans were rationalizing their failure: Health care wasn’t their issue, they reasoned. But tax reform—now there was something they could win with.
Even before the Senate failed to pass a weak health care reform bill in mid-July, congressional Republicans were rationalizing their failure: Health care wasn’t their issue, they reasoned. But tax reform—now there was something they could win with.
The effort to repeal and replace Obamacare isn’t quite dead. It will officially expire on September 30 without any further congressional intervention. According to guidance handed down by the Senate parliamentarian just before Labor Day, the end of the federal fiscal year is when this year’s budget…
A “hypocrite,” in modern political parlance, is someone who holds two opinions thought by political opponents to be incompatible. And so, since political views are always colored by circumstances and rarely align with each other with perfect philosophical consistency, the word has become a kind of…
"We’re a nation of laws, not of men.” Politicians use this line so often that it has begun to sound like a cliché. It’s a loose rendering of a phrase John Adams put into the Massachusetts constitution in 1780, but the idea is a much older one. It was given its most distinct and memorable expression…
"Make no mistake,” writes New Yorker editor David Remnick, “white supremacists are now at the forefront of American politics.” That platitudinous “make no mistake” put us in mind of Joe Queenan’s observation years ago in these pages. The phrase is “an underhanded way of clinching an argument…
"Make no mistake,” writes New Yorker editor David Remnick, “white supremacists are now at the forefront of American politics.” That platitudinous “make no mistake” put us in mind of Joe Queenan’s observation years ago in these pages. The phrase is “an underhanded way of clinching an argument…
American politics is at present dominated by two sorts of commentator. The first are those who will never find anything good to say about Donald Trump. Nothing he says and nothing his administration achieves will ever be praised by them for any reason. Any new development is an excuse to remind the…
For more than six months, the White House has been a chaotic mess—its internal processes disordered by feuds, its diplomacy and relations with Congress undermined by leaks and backbiting, its external communications confused by an undisciplined boss. John Kelly, made chief of staff in early August,…
In many quarters of the American news media today, seasoned journalists seem incapable of pondering those parts of reality that don’t complement their political worldviews. It goes beyond “bias”—we’re all biased. This is negligence.
In many quarters of the American news media today, seasoned journalists seem incapable of pondering those parts of reality that don’t complement their political worldviews. It goes beyond “bias”—we’re all biased. This is negligence.
On August 15, Alabama Republicans will begin to choose their candidate for the race to fill Jeff Sessions’ Senate seat. If none of the 9 candidates wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two will face each other in a runoff on September 26. And the winner of that contest will face the top…
“We do not seek a regime change,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on August 1, speaking of North Korea. “We do not seek the collapse of the regime . . . We’re trying to convey to the North Koreans: We are not your enemy. We are not your threat. But you are presenting an unacceptable threat to…
We’re not fans of adding “ism” to the names of presidents—“Reaganism” and “Jeffersonianism” make sense to describe those men’s political worldviews, but you wouldn’t use the formulations “Fordism” or “Clintonism” and expect to be understood. Nonetheless, “Trumpism” meant something definable to a…
We’re not fans of adding “ism” to the names of presidents—“Reaganism” and “Jeffersonianism” make sense to describe those men’s political worldviews, but you wouldn’t use the formulations “Fordism” or “Clintonism” and expect to be understood. Nonetheless, “Trumpism” meant something definable to a…
One of the most effective rallying cries against the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010 was a simple question: “Have you read the bill?” The question was an indictment of a 2,700-page measure that was poorly understood by those voting for it, sold to the public under false pretenses (“if you like…
It’s true that the Trump administration is flailing. The president hasn’t managed to accomplish a single major reform or win a single policy victory. The investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, moreover, seems likely to bring charges against one or more people associated with the…
Six months into its existence, the Trump administration seems unsure what its stance toward Iran ought to be. That’s less because the current president and his advisers don’t know what they think about Iran’s leaders than because the previous president committed the United States to a reckless and…
“My number one priority,” Donald Trump said to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee on March 21, 2016, “is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” Six months into Trump’s presidency, it’s looking more like number 10 or 20.
It took some time, but here we are. After decades of minimizing the menace posed by Russia—recall Barack Obama’s gibe, in response to Mitt Romney’s suggestion that Russia was our greatest geopolitical threat, that the 1980s had called and wanted their foreign policy back—American liberals are…
It took some time, but here we are. After decades of minimizing the menace posed by Russia—recall Barack Obama’s gibe, in response to Mitt Romney’s suggestion that Russia was our greatest geopolitical threat, that the 1980s had called and wanted their foreign policy back—American liberals are…
In June, the Senate passed a bill codifying U.S. sanctions on Russia. The bill—based on a series of Obama-era executive orders retaliating for Russia’s de facto invasion of Ukraine and, later, its meddling in the U.S. elections—passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin: 98-2.
In the first two years of the Obama administration, “Read the bill!” was an effective anti-Obamacare rallying cry. Republican congressmen, as well as conservative and Tea Party activists, demanded that legislation weighing in at more than 2,000 pages and affecting one-sixth of the economy be…
Journals like this one exist, generally speaking, not to praise politicians but to chastise, to upbraid, or at least to criticize them. And so, after hearing about the terrible shootings at the Alexandria baseball field the morning of June 14; after making the mistake of sampling the incivility and…
Journals like this one exist, generally speaking, not to praise politicians but to chastise, to upbraid, or at least to criticize them. And so, after hearing about the terrible shootings at the Alexandria baseball field the morning of June 14; after making the mistake of sampling the incivility and…
This week Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed a special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. It was an important move, and one that President Donald Trump made unavoidable with his erratic and irresponsible behavior over the past fortnight.
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…
We at The Weekly Standard have had plenty of advice for Republicans on how to criticize (and occasionally to support) Obama administration foreign and defense policies. But as the GOP presidential campaign heats up, it seems that some candidates are more tempted to imitate the foreign policy…
Irving Kristol, writer, editor, and social philosopher, has died in Washington at the age of 89. His wisdom, wit, good humor, and generosity of spirit made him a friend and mentor to several generations of thinkers and public servants.
Irving Kristol, writer, editor, and social philosopher, has died in Washington at the age of 89. His wisdom, wit, good humor, and generosity of spirit made him a friend and mentor to several generations of thinkers and public servants.
Dean Barnett began contributing to the online and print editions of THE WEEKLY STANDARD in early 2005. In less than four years, he became a favorite of our discerning readers--and of other writers. He wrote witty and penetrating essays and blog items on such diverse topics as presidential politics,…
For the second time this year, the New York Times has taken an interest in the vast collection of documents captured in postwar Iraq. The Times first noticed these materials six months ago, when the U.S. government began posting images of them on the Internet. In a dismissive report, the Times…
LATE FRIDAY MORNING, MAY 5, the White House called the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees with urgent news: CIA director Porter Goss would announce his resignation at the White House in a few hours. The news came as a surprise. Although insiders knew that Goss was increasingly…
"WHERE WAS THE NUCLEAR material transported to?" asks an aide to Saddam Hussein, in a taped conversation released last week. He answers his own question: "A number of them were transported out of Iraq." This provocative snippet is part of 12 hours of taped exchanges between Saddam Hussein and his…
THE CBS REPORT issued last week by Richard Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi left a number of interesting questions unanswered. The Internet in general and the blogosphere in particular are a means of harnessing open-source information. So we'd like to invite the blogosphere to help answer some of the…
WE HAVE LOST a great president, a great American, and a great man. And I have lost a dear friend. In his lifetime Ronald Reagan was such a cheerful and invigorating presence that it was easy to forget what daunting historic tasks he set himself. He sought to mend America's wounded spirit, to…
THE BUSH CAMPAIGN has performed well since John Kerry wrapped up the Democratic presidential nomination on March 2. But not nearly well enough. The Bush TV ads have been crisp and clever and have put Kerry on the defensive. Speeches by the president and the vice president and a host of Republican…
TWICE IN RECENT DAYS, President Bush has described America as "a hard country to defend." In part, he is prudently lowering expectations that our success in stopping all attacks on American soil after 9/11 will continue indefinitely. At a gathering of newspaper editors on April 21, the president…
ON THE SURFACE, it might seem like a simple case of media bias. In the November 24, 2003, WEEKLY STANDARD, Stephen F. Hayes summarized and quoted at length a recent, secret Pentagon memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The memo laid out--in 50 bullet points, over 16 pages--the relationship…
ONCE THERE WAS A TIME, while America was at war, when our government refused to grant its captured enemies, very much including the oddball U.S. citizens among them, access to the regular criminal courts. And the nation's leading newspapers and other such purveyors of advanced opinion rose up as…
It now seems fairly certain that some time in the next few weeks the Clinton administration will have to strike Iraq. There really are no acceptable alternatives. Saddam's recent demand for the expulsion of the U.N. weapons inspectors and for the removal of Richard Butler as head of the inspections…
Bill Clinton's foreign policy is in tatters. Republicans are pointing this out, and they're right to. But can they go beyond criticizing Clinton? Can they articulate a coherent alternative to his policies? It so happens that their political interests coincide with the interests of the nation.…
As the Clinton undertow gradually drags Democrats under, Republicans will be tempted over the next few months to sit back and play it safe. Raise lots of money, neutralize the Democrats on health care, snipe at Clinton's China policy, and coast into November -- with majorities in both houses of…
Republican senator John Ashcroft of Missouri remembers the momentum behind the tobacco bill last spring. Nearly everyone -- that is, nearly everyone in Beltway political and media circles -- insisted there was a "tidal wave" of popular support for the measure, so much that "it could not be…
Bill Clinton's China policy is a scandal. Indeed, it's three scandals in one.
You might say it was a bad week for Bill Clinton's foreign policy. India detonated five nuclear weapons -- a direct consequence, according to Indian officials, of Clinton's appeasement of China and of his administration's inability to prevent China's sales of weapons and missile technology to…
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright travels to Beijing next week, and China's leaders undoubtedly will greet her with open arms. Together, they'll be laying the groundwork for the June Sino-American summit, and Albright may intimate what new goodies the president has in store for China. Here at…
Let's see if we've got this straight. It is legally actionable -- a tort -- when blue-collar workers paste girlie posters inside their lockers. It is a tort when white-collar workers display beach-scene photographs of their wives on office desks. But when the governor of Arkansas dispatches an…
The Senate will likely vote in the next couple of weeks on the enlargement of NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The votes are there, and NATO expansion will almost certainly be approved. But a few senators are trying to postpone the vote for several months on the grounds that…
Here's the one moment from last week's ludicrous CNN "town meeting" that is worth preserving for posterity. A veteran named Mike Mac Call addressed a serious question to the Clinton administration's national-security vaudevillians, Madeleine, Bill, and Sandy:
The good news is that some clear thinking about U.S. policy toward Iraq has emerged from the muddle of the past few months. Responsible political leaders, outside the Clinton administration, have come to grips with the iron logic of the current impasse: If you want to save the United States and its…
In 1992, candidate Bill Clinton acted as if foreign policy were basically a non-issue. President Bush, astoundingly, seemed to agree. Since then, Americans and their elected officials in both parties have been listlessly basking in the afterglow of Ronald Reagan's victory in the Cold War. Attention…
Don't be fooled by artful spinning at the State Department and in the White House press room. The United States has lost badly in its most recent confrontation with Saddam Hussein. The deal worked out by President Clinton's new special negotiator, Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, will…
Some nations can afford to suffer more humiliation than others. When you're the United States, even a little humiliation exacts too high a price. This isn't just a matter of national pride. When the world's strongest power abases itself, allies begin to worry, adversaries start whetting their…
Why is Secretary of State Madeleine Albright going to the Middle East only days after three suicide bombers killed four and wounded 170 in Jerusalem? Because, the president says, the bombers wanted to kill not only civilians but the peace process itself, and they cannot be allowed to succeed. Oh?…
For the first time in more than a year, the prospects for a successful, lasting, and even a relatively just peace in Bosnia have improved. In recent weeks, one indicted war criminal was captured by NATO troops, and another was killed trying to resist capture. Meanwhile, the Bosnian Serbs, hitherto…
"We want to be embedded in the Western camp," said a prominent Polish legislator last week, as NATO acted to admit Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to membership. A 70-year-old woman in Warsaw who had turned out to see the president of the United States told a reporter, "We are finally free."
The United States Senate must decide by April 28 whether to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention. The press, the pundits, and the Clinton administration have treated the debate over the treaty as another in a series of battles between "internationalists" and "isolationists" in the new, post- Cold…
America is a land without heroes these days. Indeed, we have become almost obsessed with the idea that there is no such thing as heroism. Our journalism, once full of breathless stories about the Herculean efforts of powerful men and the selfless acts of ordinary folk, has become mostly an exercise…
Life is complicated, and politics can be too. Shepherding legislation through Congress and manging a diverse political coalition are difficult undertakings that often require subtlety, indirection, even obfuscation. Those were the skills Bob Dole perfected in his years at the helm of the Senate.…
During the Cold War, one's view of the appropriate goals of American foreign policy usually went hand in hand with one's notion of the proper level of spending on defense. Conservatives favored aggressive containment of the Soviet Union and wanted increased military spending. Liberals opposed…
The good news is that Whitewater special counsel Kenneth Starr is now looking into the circumstances under which the Clinton White House improperly secured and reviewed highly confidential background information from the FBI on more than 400 Reagan- and Bush-administration employees. A full…
The good news is that Whitewater special counsel Kenneth Starr is now looking into the circumstances under which the Clinton White House improperly secured and reviewed highly confidential background information from the FBI on more than 400 Reagan- and Bush-administration employees. A full…
This time last year, Newt Gingrich bestrode the narrow political world like a colossus. The exhaustingly productive first hundred days of the 104th Congress had concluded, and opinion was unanimous: It was a triumph of ideological vigor and political logistics. Gingrich and the Republican House had…
Your planet seems to be in good condition," Secretary of State John Hay once serenely reported to Theodore Roosevelt. One wonders whether Warren Christopher can say the same to Bill Clinton about his planet these days. Let's sum up the past few weeks: Fidel Castro shot two unarmed planes out of the…
The extraordinary rise of Steve Forbes was entirely predictable. We know this to be true, because almost everyone predicted it over the past year -- even though none of us knew we were doing so.
The era of bg government s over. With these words, in his State of the Union address, Bill Clinton announced the surrender of modern liberalism and conceded victory to conservatives. We win.
The Speaker of the House finds himself in an almost unprecedented position these days. Without changing his views, his strategies, or his tactics one iota from his triumphant first hundred days; while holding fast to the principles that helped elect the first House Republican majority in four…
It is the nature of assassinations that they do change the world -- but it is the nature of God's justice that the world changes in ways the assassin, wracked by rage or fury or madness or sociopathic self-interest, could never have anticipated. So it is with Israel's Yigal Amir. Amir's arrogant…