If you’re ever looking for a hearty chuckle, the Nation never fails to deliver. It fashions itself as a “progressive” magazine—if your notion of progress is reviving Marxist nostrums of yesteryear.
If I were a Republican strategist, which I’m pleased to say I’m not, I would pay especial attention to Shelby Steele’s op-ed “Why the Left Can’t Let Go of Racism” in the August 27 issue of the Wall Street Journal. Toward the close of his article, Steele writes that “the great problem for…
If I were a Republican strategist, which I’m pleased to say I’m not, I would pay especial attention to Shelby Steele’s op-ed “Why the Left Can’t Let Go of Racism” in the August 27 issue of the Wall Street Journal. Toward the close of his article, Steele writes that “the great problem for…
Last month the Village Voice announced it was ending its print edition, a 62-year run of muckraking reporting, cultural criticism, opinion, advocacy, and opposition—opposition to authority, to anything, sometimes to everything. Founded in 1955, by Norman Mailer among others, the Voice was America’s…
It was in the mid-1980s that I first heard the term “politically correct,” from an older housemate in Berkeley. She had a couple glasses of wine in her and was on a roll, venturing some opinions that were outré by the local standards. I thought the term witty and took it for her own coinage, but in…
A crime report in the Philadelphia Inquirer last week caught The Scrapbook’s eye:
Matthew Continetti writes at the Washington Free Beacon on what President Obama's final address to the United Nations General Assembly tells us about the failure of Obama's worldview:
Talk about unbelievable. There is a surge of stupid statements from the left along with incredible (as in "beyond credulity") claims coming from those quarters that are so nonsensical that it's clear they place their ideology above all else.
President Obama used the terror attack in California this week to push gun control. In his weekly address, Obama called the massacre an "act of terror" but then pivoted to talking about American gun laws.
Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus lashed out at debate host CNBC for the way it moderated tonight's Republican debate.
About 48 hours after Pope Francis decamped from America's greatest city, reports started circulating in the press-later confirmed by the Vatican-that the Holy Father had secretly met with Kim Davis, that Kentucky clerk who refused to grant same-sex marriage licenses. Davis, you'll recall, has been…
Back in 1999, The Weekly Standard ran one of my favorite cover lines ever: The New Europe: Menace or Farce? I often think of that question when I watch Pope Francis.
We can always count on the New York Times to remind us how complete has been conservatives’ loss in the culture wars. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Venice that Mayor Luigi Brugnaro had to retreat from his proposed ban on books headed for the magical city’s preschool library about (1) a male dog…
Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore will release his next movie in September in Toronto. Moore made the announcement on the Twitter live-streaming service Periscope. It'll premier at the Toronto Film Festival:
Americans have long been skeptical of the liberal arts. Frequently this takes the form of a discussion of whether a degree in history or literature is “worth it” in a purely economic sense. Annual reports highlight the top-earning college majors, subtly encouraging students to forgo a class in…
Speaking at an LGBT event tonight at the White House, President Obama took credit for liberal LGBT progress since he took office six-and-a-half years ago.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz had a simple question to a reporter who asked whether he had a "personal animus against gay Americans."
NPR’s “Race Card Project,” a series of stories on the topic of race and society, found another way to make us confront our own latent racism as well as the lingering racism in society this week by telling us the story of a white guy named Jamaal.
Every spring, thousands of American higher learning institutions and tens of thousands of high schools send their graduates off with a commencement ceremony. A centerpiece of the event, as old as American education itself, is the commencement speech. At their best, these speeches furnish students…
Eric Cohen writes about Jewish conservatism for Mosaic magazine:
If you pay any attention to the ways in which radicalism dominates the culture of the university these days, you're likely to feel as though you've gone through the looking glass. "White privilege." "Trigger warnings." "Rape culture." All of this (and much else) has turned academia into a bizarre,…
President Obama talked about spending a lot of money tonight -- on preschool care, community college, new infrastructure, and a variety of tax preferences for middle- and lower-income earners. All financed by new taxes, primarily on the wealthy.
If Chris Hughes knew anything about journalism, he’d throw a big party in New York and another in Washington and the media wags now heaping abuse on him would be hailing him as the last of the Medicis. But the 31-year-old owner and editor in chief of the New Republic doesn’t know a damn thing about…
Even as they publicly condemn Tea Party Republicans as hostage-taking legislative thugs, the truth is that some Democrats are quietly jealous of them. Think of it: The Tea Party gang gets to intimidate party leaders, threaten legislation, block nominees, shut down the government and default on the…
After the 2012 presidential election, Republican donors were left scratching their heads, thinking: how could we spend all that money and fall so short?
President Obama labeled the U.S. government "the most important organization on earth" and said that he'd "squeeze every last little bit of opportunity" from his position as president of the United State over the next two years. Watch here:
Tom Harkin, the top Democrat in Iowa, tells ABC News that he has serious questions about where Hillary Clinton stands on the issues:
Erica Payne, founder and president of the left-wing Agenda Project, is encouraging people to deface the cover of Paul Ryan's new book, which is hitting shelves today.
Someone I'm related to by marriage has written a superb column on the problem of media ignorance. The fact I'm not a disinterested observer shouldn't stop me from noting that the column and the event that prompted it has attracted some attention. The piece is pegged to a much discussed interview…
Peter Berkowitz, writing in RealClearPolitics:
Beverly Hills has banned fracking. Which makes it "the first municipality in California to prohibit the controversial technique for extracting natural gas and oil from underground rock deposits," according to Reuters.
There appears to be a new Obamacare strategy on the left: to tell people their Obamacare horror stories are made up. First, Harry Reid said, "Despite all that good news, there's plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they're being told all over America."
The Scrapbook takes no official position on whether the Koch brothers should buy the newspapers owned by the Tribune Company. It’s an open question whether the Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and a half-dozen other papers are national treasures which must be saved from…
The American left loves Western European democracies for their cultural sensibilities and for their policies on everything from crime to health care. One policy area where you won’t hear American liberals cite the European example, though, is abortion.
President Barack Obama will give a speech on "climate change" this Tuesday, the president announces in a YouTube video:
Writing for Salon, Curtis Morrison, a self-titled "liberal activist," admits to bugging Mitch McConnell's office. He claims to have been inspired by Julian Assange and claims, "If given another chance to record him, I’d do it again."
There is a genre of books about politics written by ideologues on both sides of the divide. Their aim is to inform their fellow partisans about the misinformation, misdeeds, and malign intentions of the people on the other side, offering talking points to rally the troops for the next…
As Clive Crook notes on Bloomberg, that while Paul Krugman does not suffer fools gladly, he does not necessarily believe that everyone “who disagrees with him [is] either a fool or a knave ... Many of those who disagree with him are sociopaths.”
Reuters appears to have prematurely published George Soros's obituary:
College basketball player Kevin Ware's compound fracture in Sunday's Elite Eight game has gained widespread media attention. And now a Kentucky group is trying to capitalize off the Louisville player's injury.
MSNBC host Chuck Todd says President Obama's Second Inaugural Address is about moving the country toward liberalism:
In a blog post on the New York Times website, columnist Paul Krugman says no to serving as treasury secretary. Which is clarifying, even though he was never offered the job anyway.
Ross Douthat has gotten himself in trouble for writing about demographics and the latest Pew report on the decline of America’s birth rate. Douthat has the temerity to suggest that having babies is important for public welfare, that Americans aren’t having enough of them, and that the root cause of…
A top adviser to President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, was heckled at a speech yesterday to grassroots organizers by a "climate activist."
In an interview with the Huffington Post, MSNBC president Phil Griffin tries to push back against the notion that his channel has become a mouth-piece for President Barack Obama.
Academic and activist Cornel West blasts Barack Obama, just days after the first black president's reelection.
The Republican party’s brutal defeat in yesterday’s presidential and Senate races offers at least one clear, abiding lesson: Republicans can’t win without making their case.
One can’t help being in awe of the New York Times. The ingenuity it displays in running down Mitt Romney, if applied to a more useful project, would be a national treasure.
When The Decline and Fall of the American Republic is written centuries hence, the date October 17, 2012, will occupy a prominent place in the narrative. On this day, a playoff game between the Yankees and the Tigers in Detroit was called not because of rain, but because of ... the threat of rain.…
Never underestimate the ingenuity of the New York Times when it comes to creating – not finding, creating – misfeasance by Mitt Romney. In a front-page, above-the-fold story on Wednesday, under the headline, “Romney’s Trade Message and Bain’s China Ties,” Sharon LaFraniere and Mike McIntire ran…
The Pew poll on the presidential race released Monday has many interesting findings that will be scrutinized, challenged and assessed with less than one month left in the campaign. The survey, taken after last Wednesday’s debate (good for Romney) and mostly after Friday’s jobs report (good for…
Mark Halperin, this morning on Morning Joe, said the media is neither scrutinizing President Obama's questions nor asking critical questions:
Tonight, CBS aired a 60 Minutes interview with President Obama. But curiously enough, the news magazine show did not air a clip of Obama admitting to interviewer Steve Kroft that some of his campaign ads contain mistakes and that some even "go overboard."
The gap between the way the media characterizes the presidential race and what is actually happening is growing larger by the day. In particular, we see a systematic emphasis on news items that favor the president and a discounting of evidence that disfavor him.
Politico executive editor Jim VandeHei last night admitted that the "Mainstream media tends to be quite smitten with the Obamas."
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney "eats only the tops of muffins," a New York Times op-ed notes. The piece, by Professor Marie Myung-Ok Lee, claims the Romney campaign is telling this anecdote to show Romney as "an everyday Joe."
There’s a bizarre moment in John Cassidy’s short New Yorker item on Paul Ryan. It’s not when Cassidy likens Ryan to Michele Bachmann or even when he claims that, by choosing Ryan, Romney “has thrown in his lot with the most ideological wing of his party.” That’s just Cassidy’s analysis, and while…
A new ad from the liberal smear group MoveOn distorts Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's views on abortion.
Here's video of a supporter of Mitt Romney being spat on by a protester in Appleton, Wisconsin:
Bill Burton, a founder of President Obama's super PAC and former White House official, partied last night with "Reporters from nearly every outlet in town," the Washington Examiner reports.
Listen to the audio of the media horde screaming questions at Mitt Romney just after he had finished paying his respects at Poland's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and tell me you don't sympathize with the pithy comment by his aide, Rick Gorka.
Is the left turning against the reelection campaign of Democratic President Barack Obama? That's the impression one gets from a recent article in the left-leaning Huffington Post.
Politico is still promoting ex-reporter Joe Williams, who is no longer working at the publication after saying that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is uncomfortable around people who are not white.
Here's an indication of just how impressive and broad-based Scott Walker's 7-point win was last night: If the Democratic strongholds of Dane County and Milwaukee County had 100 percent turnout of registered voters, and every other county remained the same, Walker still would have won the state by…
Former President Bill Clinton had plenty of praise for President Barack Obama, as the two traversed New York City last night hauling in campaign cash. “I don't think it's important to reelect the president; I think it is essential to reelect the president—if we want this country to have the kind of…
Have pro-Israel liberals—at least some of the intelligent ones—finally had enough of President Obama's incompetence and dithering with respect to Israel and the Middle East?
This campaign season, President Barack Obama has run across the country – often on the taxpayer’s dime – to rail against the privileged station of the wealthy. It is Obama and the Democrats who will cut down on the power of the elite and restore the egalitarian ideals of the country’s founding.…
Over the weekend, MSNBC host Chris Hayes told his viewers that he's "uncomfortable" with calling "war dead and the fallen ... 'heroes.'" Now, the Veterans of Foreign Wars group have responded by saying that Hayes's comments "are reprehensible and disgusting" and are asking for the MSNBC host to…
Matt Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon:
There's a profile of the late Andrew Breitbart in the New York Times "Sunday Styles" section by reporter David Carr. Carr's a talented and fair journalist, by Times standards, and the piece is mostly fair enough. But in the middle of it is this striking sentence, or rather this striking parenthesis:
Dean Singleton, chairman of the Associated Press board, introduced President Obama this afternoon at a speech to news editors in Washington. But Singleton didn’t just tell the audience the president was the next speaker—the supposed newsman offered lavish praise for the Democratic president.
In light of the bruising that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli took during this week's oral arguments, no one can blame Obamacare's supporters for trying to offer (belatedly) winning answers that the government’s attorney lacked. Two of the early entrants are law professors Akhil Amar and Jeffrey…
This week has really reminded me of Election Day 2004. Liberals, then, were just plain convinced John Kerry was going to be elected president, so much so Bob Shrum actually called Kerry, “Mr. President.” The left had convinced itself Bush was unpopular, Kerry had closed the deal, and everything…
Does liberalism embody the military virtues? Is martial virtue the highest stage of progressivism?
Two years ago in Cairo, Nobel laureate and former International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei was the talk of the town. Newly retired from the IAEA, ElBaradei returned to Egypt in February 2010 after living abroad for decades. He began criticizing the Mubarak regime, hinting that he…
If you were an anti-Semite dedicated to spreading your hatred of Jews, what charges exactly would you make in 21st century America?
On Friday, President Obama addressed the Union for Reform Judaism's convention. As Jen Rubin notes, "A good two-thirds of the address was devoted to liberal nostrums, reflecting his confidence that no matter how badly he treats the Jewish state, liberal Democratic Jews will stick by him."
The entire text of President Obama’s ambassador to Belgium’s remarks on anti-Semitism is a useful case study in the genre of pseudo-sophisticated liberal apologia for Muslim anti-Semitism. Below, Ambassador Howard Gutman says that Israel, the Jewish state, is responsible for a new wave of…
The Daily Show explores whether there is class division at the Occupy Wall Street encampment:
Frank Miller has a rant about Occupy Wall Street that’s going around this morning. It’s not a real shock—Miller has been on the side of law and order since The Dark Knight Returns and earlier this year he published a graphic novel, Holy Terror, about the clash of Islam and the West. So he’s been a…
Politico's Keach Hagey reported last week on what appeared to be, and was later confirmed as, coordination between the not for profit and allegedly non-partisan Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and the environmental activist group Greenpeace. Each organization had produced a report on the chemical…
This video of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been making its way around the blogosphere. In the clip, Romney listens to a question from a voter in New Hampshire about the balanced budget amendment, and after a bit of an exchange, Romney gets visibly annoyed, particularly when the woman…
Some political groups like to go incognito, hiding their political allegiances in order to take on a more serious, impartial tone. Take, for instance, the “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington,” which masquerades as “non-partisan watchdog.” But CREW is far from non-partisan, a new…
Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
When a New York Times op-ed columnist starts celebrating the virtues of the U.S. military, Dorothy, you know you’re not in Kansas any more.
This has got to be a metaphor for something, right?
What do participants in J Street's national conference believe in? Here's a glimpse:
The original sin of President Obama and Democrats was their belief in the theory that smashing victories by their party in the 2006 and 2008 elections represented a political realignment that would leave them in power in Washington for decades to come.