September 24, 2018

When the future becomes more finite.

The anti-immigration nationalists come up short.

Catholic scandals past and present

Pope Francis, Cardinal Wuerl, Theodore McCarrick, and the crisis of a church divided.

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…

It’s a party of scoundrels and ideologues.

Aggression in the pursuit of policy victories is no vice.

The highest office in the land has become deeply bureaucratized.

When Christopher Steele was hired to compile his “dossier” on Donald Trump in 2016, he already had an extensive history of presenting private intelligence analysis to U.S. policymakers. The former British spy had for years been funneling reports on Russia and Ukraine to senior State Department…

Woke emotionalism is not a substitute for sober policy debate.

Mencken mirrors our own complexities.

A guide for the perplexed.

The vultures are circling in Syria.

Keep the ‘dead donor rule.’

The Trump administration is often accused of swinging wildly—and sometimes with reason. But the speech delivered by national security adviser John Bolton on September 10 was very well aimed. It was a sustained warning to the officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC), delivered at…

Grant Wishard on why four young men risked prison to steal rare books from a Kentucky university library.

Christoph Irmscher reviews Benjamin Balint’s book on the international legal battle over the fate of Kafka’s manuscripts.

John Podhoretz on retelling for a new generation the story of Eichmann’s capture and trial.

Michael Warren reviews Bob Woodward’s book about life in Trump World

Last week, Barack Obama finally did what Democratic activists had been desperately hoping he would do—he reproached his successor ahead of the midterm election. It was a long, discursive oration, as Obama’s orations usually are, and it contained lots of impromptu gibes and derisive harrumphs that…

In our latter years The Scrapbook has become rather a sucker for books about Ronald Reagan. We own a couple of shelves of them and admit to enjoying even the mediocre ones, so highly do we esteem the modern era’s greatest president.

The spectacle of protesters jumping out of their chairs at regular intervals to shout incoherent slogans during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings did not lend itself to the view that those who oppose the judge’s confirmation are especially clearheaded in their beliefs. Their antics, if we may speak…

Antiquarian-minded visitors to Georgetown may have heard of the Halcyon House, a mansion on Prospect Street. The majestic Federal-style structure was built in the 1780s by Benjamin Stoddert, the first secretary of the Navy, and dramatically expanded in the 1900s by Albert Clemens, the nephew of…

The Scrapbook has never been to South Yorkshire, England, but we are eager to go. The place is evidently so free of crime that the police have nothing to do but make sure people aren’t jerks to each other. The South Yorkshire Police recently advised residents on the subject of “hate crimes”: “In…