Much as the name Tiger Woods is familiar to people who do not follow golf, so the name Stephen Hawking will be familiar even to people who care little about physics. His death on March 14 provoked an outpouring of eulogies of the kind usually reserved for rock stars and former presidents. His…
"I don’t agree with him on that one," my stepmother said. “It was wrong, and I don’t think he should have done it.” Usually she took my father’s side in these discussions. Not this time.
Tomorrow some people from Catholic Charities are coming to tow away the beautiful BMW 740iL that my father bought in Germany at the turn of the century. Like the vast majority of American males he was until then a car enthusiast who had never owned a nice car. He didn’t suffer from that—fancy…
At the height of his influence in the 1960s and ’70s, Billy Graham was a man about whom nearly every adult in America had an opinion. He was everywhere—his weeklong evangelistic “crusades” packed stadiums around the globe; innumerable books and articles carried his byline; his face appeared on the…
If you have lived almost any kind of active life, after age 50 someone you know dies every day. Not necessarily someone you knew well. Not necessarily a spouse, a child, a parent—one of those whose death is like a part of yourself, crushed and torn away. But someone you knew, yes: an acquaintance,…
Just a few days before America’s Pastor, Billy Graham, succumbed to Parkinson’s or cancer or pneumonia (when you’re 99-years-young, ailments tend to arrive in multiple-choice fashion), I was walking through Washington’s new Museum of the Bible with my family. As local museums go, the Bible museum…
B.D. McClay on 'Eternal Life,' the new Dara Horn novel that takes the long view of longing.
Journalists like anniversaries, or at least this one does, and 2018 is an ideal vantage point from which to survey the past. It’s been a half-century now since the annus horribilis of 1968, for example, and a century-and-a-half since my favorite president (James Buchanan) died. But more to the…
The other day a friend told me that my name came up at the funeral of someone I didn’t remotely know. I told her, this friend, that I assumed that the person who brought it up was doubtless the minister, priest, or rabbi officiating at the funeral. She said it was the minister. I added that I knew…
At this juncture, we can stipulate that President Trump would probably have been well advised to follow Gen. John Kelly’s reported advice and write a letter of condolence to the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson instead of calling her on the telephone. No doubt Trump had reasoned that words of regret,…
Obamacare “repeal and replace” may have failed this year, but that doesn’t mean the Affordable Care Act can’t be significantly defanged. For example, there is still time to excise the Independent Payment Advisory Board from the law before it is up and running.
Obamacare “repeal and replace” may have failed this year, but that doesn’t mean the Affordable Care Act can’t be significantly defanged. For example, there is still time to excise the Independent Payment Advisory Board from the law before it is up and running.
Michael Cromartie, by his wits and his Christian faith, created something out of nothing, what investor Peter Thiel calls going from 0 to 1. And he became an important and influential figure in Washington, though that wasn’t his aim.
When I was a small boy, polio terrified me. Each year, it would strike thousands of children like me—and you never knew when or where it would hit next. In the 1952 epidemic, a very bad year, there were nearly 60,000 reported cases in the United States and more than 3,000 deaths.
In the fall of 1977—40 years ago now, when we were freshmen at Georgetown—four of us climbed up to steal the hands off the clock on the tower of Healy Hall, 150 feet or so above the quad.
In the fall of 1977—40 years ago now, when we were freshmen at Georgetown—four of us climbed up to steal the hands off the clock on the tower of Healy Hall, 150 feet or so above the quad.
I like to think of myself as a writer-editor on call. If a metaphor needs rewiring or a talking-point has lost its pointiness, I am on it like butter on toast. But when a friend asked me to write an obituary for her mother, I wondered if I was really the man for the job. I didn’t know her mother…
Should anyone outside the military be forced to kill? Most people would say no. But with the ubiquitous availability of abortion—and the push to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia—doctors may soon find themselves required to take lives or risk being booted from the medical profession.
The Pentagon Friday announced the death of Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler, a soldier who had been serving in Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq. He died of wounds received during a hostage rescue mission. But in keeping with the Obama administration's insistence that the president ended combat…
I've had a lot of dogs of many different physical types, but each has come loaded with the same daunting reminder: the countdown clock I can’t help but hear ticking away inside of them. I suppose I come with one of those, too, if I care to confront reality. Denial may be easier on the nerves, but…
The death of Sir Winston Churchill, 50 years ago last week, reminds The Scrapbook that, while a half-century is a very long time, Churchill’s lifetime is closer to us than we suspect. Indeed, in the words William Faulkner gave to Gavin Stevens in Requiem for a Nun, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t…
Obama administration officials have been effusive in their praise for late Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz who died last week at the age of 90. Now comes word that chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey is establishing a "research and essay competition" at the US…
Anyone reading this knows where he was on September 11, 2001. A diminishing number remember where they were on January 30, 1965—the day we said farewell to Winston Churchill. (He died fifty years ago, January 24, 1965.)
President Obama issued this statement after the death of photojournalist Luke Somers, who was held hostage in Yemen by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and was killed in a rescue attempt.
If I sported a hairpiece, I’d be wearing it at half-mast right about now, upon hearing that the world just grew a little less interesting. For the most colorful man who ever inhabited Congress, former Ohio Democratic Rep. James A . Traficant Jr., expired today at the age of 73. Traficant—he of…
Two stories about the problems at the Veterans Affairs. Both come with numbers, if not faces, attached.
The attempts of defenders of Obamacare to rouse the American people in favor of the doomed monstrosity have become more desperate and bizarre. The most recent example is taking place in Florida, where the sudden death of a young uninsured woman is being cited as an indictment of the…
In 2012, Democrats ran a well-coordinated campaign to demonize and distort pro-life candidates as anti-woman misogynists hell-bent on taking away birth control. The Republican response to this line of attack consisted mostly of pivoting away to focus on “jobs” and the “economy.” With rare…
Echoing a report issued last month from the Kaiser Family Foundation, Ezra Klein says that the projections of significant adverse selection in the Obamacare exchange pools are vastly overblown. Indeed, Klein even claims that “the risk of a ‘death spiral’ is over.” But a closer look at Klein’s…
One August afternoon in 1999, my parents and I drove to a farm in Leesburg, Virginia, to look at a litter of Jack Russell Terrier puppies we’d seen advertised. As soon as we arrived at the breeder’s house, we were confronted by Bunny, the long-legged mother of the pups. She was jumping in place,…
It must be one of those inversions of this age of the media that the issues raised by the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia have faded into the background, while the main attention has been drawn to the screening of this story by the liberal media. But even more curious has been screening…
A new investigative video shows a Washington, D.C.-based abortion doctor admitting that if a baby is born alive in his clinic after a failed abortion attempt he would let the baby suffocate on fluid in the child's throat or lungs.
This paid death notice appeared recently in the New York Times:
Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, said today on the Senate floor that Hurricane Katrina was "nothing in comparison" to Hurricane Sandy:
CBS reports this morning that witnesses are saying "that there was never an anti-American protest outside of the consulate [in Benghazi, Libya]. Instead, they say, it came under planned attack. That is in direct contradiction to the administration's account of the incident."
On Monday, President Obama traveled to Louisiana to tour flood damage after Hurricane Isaac hit the Gulf region last week.
The Akron Beacon Journal reports:
On June 19, 1981 a vigorously healthy Justice Potter Stewart resigned from the Supreme Court at the age of 66. “I've always been a firm believer in the principle that it’s better to go too soon than to stay too long. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I wanted to have an opportunity to spend…
"In lapidary inscriptions," said Dr. Johnson, "a man is not under oath." Still, I have been a little startled by the Princess Diana-style reaction to the death of Steve Jobs. The Internet has been weighted down with lachrymose tributes; even the mainstream press is given over to extended…
Jack Kevorkian, most famous for playing a part in the deaths of 130 people, has died in Michigan. Over the years, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has paid a little attention to Kevorkian -- and his practice. Consider these articles:
"Limbaugh: ‘We Need To Open The Program Today By Congratulating President Obama’"