December 24, 2018

Alice B. Lloyd on parting words: After all, tomorrow is another day.

The guilty pleasure whose time has come

The outgoing U.N. ambassador sounds a lot like someone running for something.

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.

High-ranking public officials have resigned for less than what these documents allege.

At a congressional hearing this week, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) asked an irate and not entirely comprehensible question about his granddaughter’s iPhone. The only problem, as the tech exec who was the hearing’s sole witness explained, is that iPhones are made by Apple but the tech exec was the CEO…

Not for the first time, Americans appear to be slightly confused about events in France. The mass demonstrations that began as a protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s “climate-change” taxes gave comfort to conservatives here, and not without reason. The new levies on gasoline and diesel…

The hot cause right now is prison reform, and even lots of conservatives are on board. The Heritage Foundation put out an article with this title: “How This Criminal Justice Reform Bill Could Make Our Neighborhoods Safer.” My reaction: Have supporters of the bipartisan reform bill now before the…

A new curriculum to teach students how to disagree.

The president can’t save an industry he doesn’t understand

What can be done about Americans’ declining life expectancy?

One of every seven pickups sold in the U.S. is diesel—for good reason.

The astonishing resilience of the Department of Justice.

Theresa May retains office but hemorrhages power.

It's not just for Brett Kavanaugh.

John Podhoretz on what makes a movie stand the test of time.

Hannah Long on how escape-room operators are locking in fun and profit.

Ian Marcus Corbin on values in the art world.

Clare Coffey on what these creatures of myth and mystery reveal about ourselves and civilization.

The Scrapbook has had occasion to complain from time to time about the way in which journalists in the mainstream news media use the terms “conservatives” and “Republicans.” “Conservatives” hold this loathsome opinion, they might write, or “Republicans” are doing that bizarre thing, but when you…

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New information from the Census Bureau confirms that the Swamp is still the Swamp. Between 2013 and 2017, the five wealthiest areas in America by median income were Loudoun County, Virginia; Fairfax County, Virginia; Howard County, Maryland; Falls Church City, Virginia; and Arlington County,…

The Scrapbook has a weakness for hardcover collections of essays and columns. Not many people like them, judging by how well they sell, but we boast several shelves full of collections by William F. Buckley, Joseph Epstein, George Will, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Christopher Hitchens, and many others.

Maybe you have to live in the bleak midwinter to get it. Maybe you have to see the countryside in its ash-white purity to understand—the landscape burnt-over by the dead indifferent cold. Maybe you have to wonder, as you wander out under the distant stars, what it would mean to live in a universe…